PLAYING TO WIN. Achieving Excellence in Davidson Athletics

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1 Released Fall of 2015

2 Every day across the Davidson College campus, intellectually curious students collaborate with renowned professors to produce creative, original work in the arts, sciences, and humanities. From our foundational Honor Code to our core mission of leadership and service that unites our community and galvanizes Wildcat fans, Davidson offers a rich, dynamic culture that provides students with invaluable experiences for life. Our nearly 2,000 students live, work, and grow in an inclusive, supportive community that empowers them to develop compassion, analytic rigor, creativity, resilience, and moral courage. And this community exists because of the college s longstanding commitment to educational excellence and access for all talented students, regardless of their financial circumstances. This is an exceptional place. 25 percent of the student body plays Division I sports and more than 80 percent of students study or work internationally during their four years. A student can simultaneously be a Division I athlete, major in Classics, and explore Digital Studies as a career path. Faculty and staff prepare students to exert disproportionate impact for good in the world. Members of the community live lives of consequence and integrity, and deliberately preserve and enhance that which enables graduates to lead in the service of something larger than themselves. u This is Davidson.

3 THE COMPETITIVE ADVANTAGE OF ATHLETICS AT DAVIDSON COLLEGE Davidson s NCAA Division I athletics program and its recent move to the Atlantic 10 are among the school s most distinctive qualities, and provide the college with a genuine strategic advantage. As one of very few nationally prominent liberal arts colleges to combine play at the highest level with unrivaled academic opportunity, Davidson College is an exemplar of amateur athletic excellence. We have the ability to educate and graduate the nation s most promising scholar athletes Davidson Game Changers who want an exceptional educational and athletic experience and wish to flourish on campus and succeed in life beyond Davidson. We have the opportunity to galvanize the existing Davidson community and attract new fans and friends from across the country through our competitive, exciting sporting events, like Basketball, our flagship program. By increasing Davidson s commitment to athletics through new revenue streams and greater donor support, the college can ensure that the standard of excellence exemplified in our academic program is mirrored in a competitive Division I athletics program. Now is the time to strengthen the powerful and rare synergies that emerge from the exceptional academics, supportive community and competitive athletics that afford Davidson its special character and competitive advantage. DEFINING DIVISON I ATHLETICS AT DAVIDSON COLLEGE Davidson athletics serves Davidson s distinctive educational goals. Our scholar athletes are leaders in play and in the classroom. In our first year in the A-10, Davidson earned the highest Academic Progress Rate and highest Graduation Success Rate (GSR) in the conference. What s more, Davidson recently ranked #4 in the nation in GSR, tied with Harvard, Yale, Stanford, Brown and Colgate, and ahead of #10 ranked Duke, Columbia, Princeton and Lafayette. Davidson athletics embodies our primary purpose and our community. Our Division I programs develop the talents of young people for lives of leadership and service and we value and honor the qualities that our scholar athletes possess: resilience, loyalty, integrity, and an uncompromising work ethic. The creativity and teamwork that our athletes develop in competition significantly enrich Davidson s classrooms and labs, and the overall campus culture. Davidson athletics attracts a diverse student body. Our scholar athletes hail from across the country and around the world, and their ethnic, racial, and socioeconomic makeup underscores our institutional commitment to diversity, inclusivity, and access for all talented students. Davidson is well known for its unwavering commitment to excellence at the highest level; our athletes are full participants in the community and Davidson is a better place because of our scholar athletes and the culture of pride, integrity, and excitement they foster. 1

4 Davidson athletics positions Davidson on the national stage. Sports competition gives us a platform from which to tell our stories and strengthens our presence among audiences who do not yet know Davidson. Athletics inspires pride in our students, faculty, staff, and parents. Our alumni revel in the opportunity to come home to Davidson, where they can share in the experience of a game on McKillop Court, watch the Wildcats on television, and support the teams at alumni events as we travel around the country. Greater national awareness of Davidson will enhance internship, job, and research opportunities for our students and graduates. ATHLETICS DONE RIGHT As a premier liberal arts college that prepares talented students for lives of leadership, service, and impact, Davidson maintains a competitive Division I sports program because it serves our educational mission. We believe this is a collaborative endeavor, and we make the following commitments as scholar athletes, faculty, coaches, staff, alumni, trustees, and fans: We are committed to integrity, honesty, equity and accountability--values that are foundational at Davidson College. We are committed to recruiting and enrolling scholar athletes who can thrive in the classroom, lab, and on the field and court. We are committed to ensuring that our scholar athletes have an unsurpassed educational experience. We are committed to the physical and emotional well-being of our scholar athletes and to the development of the total person now and as they move into the world. We are committed to investing in the professional development of our coaches. We are committed to investing in facilities to achieve appropriate comparability with peer schools. We are committed to building and sustaining an athletic program that best positions Davidson to compete and win at the national level. We are committed to responsible fiscal stewardship and accountability. We strive for excellence. We compete with integrity. We play to win. 2

5 SCHOLARSHIPS: OUR GREATEST OPPORTUNITY Davidson s academic expectations rival those of the most selective Division I schools in the country. To yield our athletic recruits we often compete against Ivy League institutions, Duke, and Stanford the best-known universities in the world or we identify diamonds in the rough, talented young people whose potential others do not recognize. Both approaches require scholarships, aggressive, extensive recruiting, and experienced, effective coaching staff. The combination of a liberal arts curriculum, nationally recognized academic excellence, and Division I sports differentiates Davidson from other highly selective institutions and enables Davidson to attract some of the very best scholar athletes in the world. To yield these scholar athletes, Davidson must be a financially reasonable option. With a well-funded, strategically deployed athletic scholarship program, Davidson can enroll more truly exceptional individuals who excel in class and on the field and who lead lives of leadership after graduation. Our coaches need an increase in dollars to attract top recruits now, yet Davidson athletics also must build for a sustainable future. We will lead a visible and aggressive scholarship campaign to expand the number of athletic scholarships at Davidson so that we both yield the scholar athletes we recruit and consistently rank in the top half of the A-10 Conference. This campaign calls for securing a significant number of expendable (current use) scholarships annually in each of the next four fiscal years--these dollars will provide an immediate infusion of scholarship dollars to the program. In addition, the scholarship campaign calls for a much more intentional effort to secure a significant number of endowed athletic scholarships. Once these scholarships reach the minimum endowment threshold, the interest from these funds will be available each year in perpetuity. In certain cases, we will blend the above scholarship opportunities to create hybrid scholarships. These scholarships will consist of 20 percent expendable funds--which will be utilized in years one through five--and 80 percent of endowment funds, which will build until year six and then release interest at the same level in perpetuity. We will also seek to support scholarships through additional fundraising. We will, for example, look to endow head coaching positions, which enable some current operating funds to be reallocated to athletic scholarships and/or be used directly to increase scholarship funding streams. 3

6 THE ROADMAP Our Vision We are changing the game for athletics at Davidson by demonstrating that a school of 2,000 students with the highest academic and ethical standards can play to win at the most competitive, national level. Strategies Recruit, enroll and educate the best scholar athletes in the country. Lead an aggressive fundraising campaign that brings the number of scholarship equivalencies at Davidson to the A-10 Conference average in each sport. Strengthen partnership between Admission and Athletics to maximize opportunity for yielding the best scholar athletes. Strengthen the bridge between faculty and scholar athletes, and between career development and scholar athletes. Recruit and retain high-performing coaches and athletic administrators. Create professional development opportunities for coaches. Develop shared annual goals and a structure of accountability for the athletics department. Build a sense of community and collective identity among scholar athletes, coaches, athletic administrators, alumni and supporters. Maintain facilities comparable to peer institutions. Generate knowledge of Davidson s distinctive values, unparalleled educational environment, and athletic programs. Prioritize sports where success will help our entire athletics program recruit more effectively and gain national recognition. 4

7 CONCLUSION This is an exciting time for Davidson athletics. We seek to preserve what is distinctive about Davidson s program as we leverage the opportunities presented by current national challenges in college athletics and our unique position in the A-10 to compete and win. Our scholar athletes are integral to the Davidson experience. For those scholar athletes with all the choices, we want them to choose Davidson. 5