CONVENTION: State of the Association Address

Before we leave our opening session and head to technical symposiums or to committee meetings, I want to inform you of a recent action taken by the Board of Directors.

In our meeting Monday, we voted unanimously to create a clear and united process — one in which there is transparent communication in regards to any-and-all proposed legislation inside our organization. Going forward, there will be a tracking system that will allow the membership to be updated quarterly in keeping up with the legislative process. This way, the membership will be well in-the-loop and able to follow its progress.

And now, I would like to say a few brief words about our profession and this professional association.

As of this year, our association has reached an all-time high in membership. Over 98% of all NCAA track & field programs are members of the USTFCCCA, across all three divisions. We also count 98% of NJCAA programs and nearly 85% of NAIA programs as members.

We also have eight high school associations that have joined our vast organization. New to the USTFCCCA for 2017, we are proud to welcome the high school coaches associations from Michigan and Virginia.

Our annual meeting, this convention, continues to expand. In fact, each of our conventions has been larger than the last. For the first time in our 12-year history, I’m happy to report we have over 1,600 coaches in attendance.

We also have continued to grow our programs to honor and recognize outstanding coaches and student-athletes. Award programs like those presented today at Opening Session and Friday evening’s presentation of The Bowerman Award are among the over 18,000 awards presented to student-athletes and coaches by this association on a yearly basis.

Coaching track & field and cross country is a passion for all of us and for the majority of us, it is also our livelihood. We invest and reinvest ourselves in the sports of track & field and cross country every single day, and our sports and our athletes are better for our commitment.

According to the latest data available from the office of postsecondary education within the U.S. Department of Education, four-year colleges and universities in the United States spend over three-quarters of a billion dollars each year in recurring costs for collegiate track & field and cross country. That number does not include any facility or capital outlay costs.

That’s a tremendous investment. In fact, it’s the largest investment in cross country and track & field by anyone anywhere in the world.

To give you a measuring point for that number, the United States Olympic Committee spent just over 200 million dollars in 2015, according to their own external audit, on all the Olympic sports in the United States, including fielding national teams.

I certainly believe that we deliver results on that investment, not just in terms of championship teams and record-setting individual performances but primarily in terms of delivering value back to our campuses by positively impacting the lives of all the student-athletes who entrust themselves in our care.

It is important that we protect that annual investment by the collegiate community because without it, we would lose tens of thousands of opportunities to positively impact the lives of student-athletes. On top of that, there is no replacement entity for the United States collegiate system in terms of its investment in cross country and track & field.

But we must do more than protect what we have. We must cultivate, nurture and grow that investment. We do that by demonstrating our value and by advocating for our student-athletes, our programs and our sports.

It is important to note that each of our institutions measures our value differently — what is most important at my school may not be what is most important at yours. But it is imperative that we demonstrate to our campus administrators, to our student bodies, to our alumni and to the public at-large that we can align with and exemplify their values.

This is a task that is both highly individualized and yet too big for any one of us to accomplish alone, which means that we must come together as a group, just as our individual student-athletes come together as a team with common goals and direction – to find that finish line.

From where I stand, in my last convention as your president, I believe that this association is strong because we make it strong. We make it strong by joining as members, attending our annual meeting and volunteering to serve on committees. It is important to share our knowledge with our colleagues and to participate in the process of advocating for the present and future of our sports.

I want to encourage all of us this week to be engaged: to be engaged in listening, in learning and in advocating. This is our responsibility as professional coaches: to leave our sports better for tomorrow than they are today. When we work together, we have the power to make our profession better, to make our association better and to make the sports of cross country and track & field better.