college of louisiana welcome to the show anthony nice to be with you yeah no problem so usually i start my guest by whether we're at the college so we're going to school well i started my long college journey at state university in new york at cortland and had some academic difficulties there really wasn't prepared for college and wound up but going to the community college orange county community college in middletown new york and i honestly can say that having making the baseball team there changed my life it made me want to do well academically so i could stay eligible but also it just made me more competitive and wanted made me want to do well so i spent two years in orange county playing baseball and then finished work university of new york at brockport and played baseball for two more years they're great fantastic so when the process start for you back in high school was a freshman year senior year how did it all started and you picking the  school well i think i probably started thinking more seriously about college when i was a sophomore in high school i was really young for my age actually it skipped a grade in grade school so i was very young and my sister went to one and my sister and i were close court and was a great school at the time thought i wanted to be a mathematics major and coach a school baseball and got accepted to quote and so that's how i made my initial choice and had i done ok their academic like i probably would have been a proud red dragon graduate but i didn't do well and you know the failure of my life to that point and  fortunately i was able to get admitted to orange county community college and that as i said turned my life around great so now when you when you went on to college what were the difficulties at the school that you felt didn't get you through and then ended up going to transfer well i'm but my high school is a very tiny high school in upstate new york and the catskill mountains a town called narrows  berg right on the pennsylvania new york werder and my graduating class was a largest school history of thirty two so i had never been in a class of more than thirty two students and my first class to court when was in  lecture hall two hundred fifty two taking psych want to want i was lost and kind of buried having been you know kind of a big shot in high school all the sudden i'm just a number and  i i just didn't know how to study i had really needed to study through high school and and really didn't take my academic program as aggressively as i should have there was plenty of help out there but i didn't know where to go for it and i would reach out for it so i made a lot of immature mistakes and probably am a warning for a lot of other young kids going to college you know there's help out there reach out for it and be willing to accept it great so now you graduate from college how do you go from there to becoming the in the rut that director  and so he took me on and i coached our pitchers and that year was also another transformative year for me because i confirmed the level of baseball i wanted to coach and also decided and there were all of these other people who wanted to teach physical education i could get a job so fortunately my academic advisor came to me one day and said would you be interested in going on for your doctor and i said me i never thought of that and she said wall i did it you can do it but ok so fortunate enough to get a teaching associate ship at temple university in philadelphia and spent three years at temple teaching and working in the dean's office where i got my doctoral degree so i was twenty six i had my doctor vegetation and sports psychology and no job i was fortunate enough to  give an opportunity at interview to be the first full time athletic director at r u b u y in indianapolis this is august of one nine hundred seventy seven and by some miracle they hired me so here i am with no real experience as their first full time athletic director went from there to back to temple for four years in the eighty's as director of campus reckon so see it professor  at same time coaching baseball at two different colleges in philadelphia from there i went to kenyon college in ohio for nine years as athletic director and five of which were baseball coach then five years at triangle in march college  lancaster pennsylvania as athletic director and couple years a softball coach then a few years as a faculty member at pointe park university in pittsburgh teaching sports management for years at purdue university  studies where my daughter got her undergraduate degree from there i decided it was time to be back in athletics my daughter graduated from college and centenary offered me an opportunity to really pursue my passion which is running an athletic program at a division three level so i told you a circuitous but it got me to where i am so that please wait a minute my next question then  you've you've traveled quite a lot for a lot of different positions what is that is that a prerequisite to taking these jobs is you have to be flexible enough to go to different states different schools absolutely there aren't that many of these jobs and i was never the type of person to stay in one place for a long long time it was in two different places nine years but i think there is a natural turnover time i know for me and i think for men or church that i always found that if i stated a place too long i began to accept things that needed to tension as those things that couldn't be changed and i got a little i got it cheap but i also got too complacent so moving has never been an issue for me fortunately my family has been very flexible in that and so yeah i think moving in the world of college athletics is really a necessity so if someone wants to get into that field that's that's something that they i've ever worked you know temples temple at thirty five thousand students when i was there and you know we are about six hundred full time undergrads here centenary entry port however almost half of the student body or and athletics so i am really the only full time person who does strictly administration and we have all full time paid coaches which is unusual for division three but i do everything from compliance to supervising the student athlete get student athlete advisory committee to doing p a a for soccer doing play by play baseball on our streaming video to pretty much everything and serving on every committee  report directly to the president who is fantastic he's a new president who has really read some great life into the college and is tremendously supportive of athletics so it's it's it's really been kind of  a rebirth for me and in college athletics an opportunity to rebuild a program that's fantastic so a lot of parents out there they always they always talk about their kids going to college and playing at the college level is there any financial means or monies that at a division three type of school i know division one you have your scholarships and things but is there anything out of division three types cool that parents can look at as well well absolutely i would recommend that parents send in the students themselves become very to clear with what's available through financial aid in an institution those division three schools have a bit of an issue of people having sticker shock when they see how much the cost of attending a private liberal arts college yes you know there are some of those places and i used to work are like sixty five thousand dollars a year now to attend but nobody pays sixty five thousand dollars a year or hardly anybody pay sixty five thousand an example here and at centenary we have an early visit award if a student applies to centenary and they come to visit do campus visit before december fifteenth they get an automatic five thousand dollars grant that carries through for years a twenty thousand dollars scholarship over the cost of four over the time period of four years if they are from out of state there's an additional five thousand dollars grant so for now state student coming here the i think the total cost years around forty nine thousand per year so it's down to thirty nine thousand then on top of that that depending on the academic potential student there are a number of different kinds of students so so it makes the cost very reasonable in the end for a private college experience and every school does the same thing great so tell me a little bit about the school what's the school like where are they actually located of trees forty for a person i've been down into the new orleans area and i know she supports a ways away but some people out there that have never been to louisiana you know give me a little sense of what the school is about how far it is so on all right shriek where is north western louisiana we're almost in texas and a fifteen minute drive you are in east texas and many people think that tree porter is an extension of these texas because it is not really like new orleans should get south of lafayette south of baton rouge it becomes a totally different culture  different environment so we are we are kind of like an east texas institution and city we're right on the red river tree port was built on oil and  gas currently have a number of casinos helping the the economy right on the red river hoping that the oil and gas business prospers once again send areas been around we will have our two hundred th anniversary and twenty twenty one twenty five and originally was founded in jackson mississippi and moved here it is as i said affiliated with the methodist church our primary academic programs are the hard sciences we place many many students in medical school some school that school now we also have a very strong business program  a good education program and we have a famous choir our centenary choir travels internationally we are we are known athletically for our years as a division one of only two division three schools in the entire state of louisiana the other schools louisiana college it's it's been an interesting challenge trying to educate the state of louisiana about division three most of their experience with college athletics is ellis you can attack two plane schools of that nature so the value of a private liberal arts college and a division three athletic experience is not widely known and in this state so  frankly a lot of our students come from the dallas area we're three hours from dallas two hundred miles from dallas so you know our border extends all the way you know through texas arkansas  mississippi we have kids from colorado so where we're a pretty national institution that's great for only around six hundred kids coming there that you have a wide net of people coming we do it and  we certainly have aspirations to to be a larger institution we had it at a terrific admission year this year we are hopeful to grow the enrolment here two hundred or so in the next several years and i'm really confident that it would do it with a car a nation of our great president dr chris coleman who came here from gilbert college in buffalo and is has really made some wonderful changes and reached there's those are parish community college so there are three of us but we're the only private four year school in that area so what are some of the athletic programs that you have there and what are some of the teams that you actually winter men's women's basketball and men's when swimming in the spring baseball softball men's women's tennis men's and women's golf with the ending look cross and hopefully lists schools of that ilk texas lutheran and we also have colorado college interesting laying off in our conference for those folks back in the east room from we're accustomed to being in division three conferences where we might travel two hours to plan upon it here are an average one way trip for an event it's four hundred miles wide and we travel nine hundred twelve miles to colorado springs like colorado college so it's really different best of all for example was a friday sunday experience suckers friday sunday week we kind of travel almost like the ivy leagues to the friday sunday format for most things  i have to tell our baseball program our baseball program has obviously turned out some true fact players and we won our first ever division three conference championship this year in a conference golf championship so we had some success here this year we are poised for more success great coaching staff terrific support staff and our institution really cares about athletics and that would be something i would suggest that student athletes and parents look for is a place that is not embarrassed about its outlet of program and its success i think that schools like ours attract young men and young women who want to be successful in everything they do so why not be great in athletics and bigger bring in academics it's not a zero sum game you can do both yeah that's great now you know you talked about the chorus  money in chorus as well are those everybody of the school able to get these monies that you talked about before there are scholarships for courses for can or no athletic scholarships but there are some choral scholarships  wow that's fantastic and that all parents also talk about it it's always about the sport and never about academics what's your take on on that i don't agree you know i've worked at several division three schools and it is always academics first and you know maybe i've been fortunate i've worked at some really outstanding schools but division three in its heart is is  academic and it's achieving a degree preparing for a life after college note for the vast majority of division three outlets it's not going to involve professional sports  happens occasionally but i don't think many people going to do vision three planning to be professional athletes so i would disagree and i actually think that there is this perception about college athletics brush that all college athletics are the same they're all the yellow shoes or ohio states of the world and they're not the best majority there's four hundred fifty division three members there's more division three schools and there are division one and two and we have more sports than most of those division one into schools so we're we're churning out to restrict people who are really good students now that there's some kind of like a study hall or something that that the athletic department gives to these kids so then they can keep up with their studies sometimes you know we've we don't do it very much here at centenary our students come in very well prepared to be college students  such that students are challenged to be able to do their academic work we had this pessimistic or at of our two hundred nine student athletes twenty twenty eight of them at four point zero grade point averages wow that's yes this past year they're fifty five percent of the freshman class recruited steve nothings so you know where we were not only recruiting athletes recruiting students for the enrollment you know at the show usually i asked my guests what advice do you want to give to the families out there that their sons and daughters want to go to college they never heard of centenary college of louisiana what advice you want to give to those student well i think there's four questions that student perspective student athlete and parents need to be able to answer when they choose a college number one is does this institution enter did ring have the academic program that you need to pursue the career that at eighteen years of age you think your current pursuit and we know they're going to change your major probably at least once so number one is is there an academic fit number two can you afford it and i think a lot of people write off a college as not being able to afford it by simply looking at the sticker price they need to do more and in checking out actually what people do pay to go to that institution so i can i really can't emphasize that enough don't be scared by that the sticker price number three thing as does the institution have an athletic program at the level at which you feel you could compete and be comfortable and get enough playing time don't undersell yourself but don't oversell yourself as well so that's really really important and the fourth one is the one that you really can't quantify it's when you walk around that campus when you're visiting that campus and you look at those buildings and those people in the folks you talk to you picture yourself being there for years can you picture your home for the next four years and if you can answer all those questions yes or you're from it if if you may have the place you're going to go to school i think those four questions are really the most salient questions you can ask right well thank you for very much for coming on the show  it's my pleasure thanks so much i think this is a great service that you're providing for folks and it's been my pleasure to be with you thank you so you'll be watching the secrets of college planning on the host anthony