More On Josie Harper

Take a deep breath 'cause there's a lot to share in a short time so here goes ...

As reported yesterday, Athletic Director Josie Harper will be stepping down this spring and an interim AD will take the role for one year to allow a new president time to acclimate before being involved in a critically important hire. Today's Daily Dartmouth has a front page story and a column.

The story begins this way:

Dartmouth Athletic Director Josie Harper will retire at the end of June after 27 years as a member of the athletic staff, she announced Tuesday. Harper, who has served as athletic director for the past seven years, was the first female to fill that position in the Ivy League.

Harper said age was a factor in her decision to retire.

“I am almost 66, but I hate the word ‘retirement,’” she said in an interview with The Dartmouth. “I see it as reenergizing and redirecting.”

This blog is (mostly) rooted in football, so here's an outtake from that story on the struggling program that went 0-10 last fall:

“Things are different when you are standing outside looking in,” Harper said, referring to fans’ expressed disappointment. “The real barometer is the students. Players say we are a better football team than three years ago — an alum sitting somewhere reading The New York Times does not understand that.”

The Daily Dartmouth column gives Harper a nod where the writer feels it is deserved, but is more pointed about the disappointments in two of what Harper has frequently referred to as, "front porch" sports. It begins this way:

Josie Harper, Dartmouth’s Athletic Director since 2002, announced yesterday that she is retiring. She is leaving in her wake a multitude of new and improved athletic facilities utilized by, for the most part, drastically underperforming teams.

It also includes this:

On the one hand, Dartmouth has consistently fielded strong ski, soccer, hockey and lacrosse teams. Harper has been able to leave these programs largely untouched and still see success. But I can’t go home and brag to my friends about our great ski team. I want to talk about the success Dartmouth is having in the sports that everybody else talks about: basketball and football. Obviously, this is impossible.

Also from the story:

Some students and alumni have theorized that the College will ask head football coach Buddy Teevens to serve as athletic director, but Harper called this speculation “scuttlebutt,” adding that people often assume that the football coach will become the new director after the old director retires.

I may have missed it, but something I saw in our morning paper and didn't notice in The D was a significance of the timing of the announcement. From the local paper:

"A new, voluntary incentive program, whereby Dartmouth employees age 55 and older with 10 or more years of continuous service can receive payment equal to an additional six months of salary beyond their retirement dayte, also played a small part in Harper's decision. The deadline to enroll in the program is Friday."

Green Alert Take: Good for Josie Harper. I've known her for a long time and she has always been friendly, approachable and helpful. On occasion at the newspaper I had to write stories that no doubt made her cringe, but she never took it personally and let it affect our relationship. Long after won-loss records have been forgotten, the many facilities built on her watch will be testimony to her time in the corner office of Alumni Gym.

I took in the Dartmouth men's basketball game against Stony Brook last night along with 220 other hearty souls. (There were 543 at the women's ice hockey game against Providence.) Anyway, the halftime promotion was a "round the world" shooting deal pitting two contestants against each other. After a young woman made just one shot, out strode former offensive lineman Dustin Adkins '09. He swished his first two shots to clinch the $50 savings bond (I believe that was the prize) and then casually tossed up the rest of his shots.

Speaking of former Dartmouth linemen, Eddie Tabasky '09 is pictured on the front page of the Daily D today working on a project for his Sculpture I class.

And finally, when the Daily Princetonian has headlines like "Spitzer '81 to be Wilson School dean," and "University will invest in Somali pirates," you know it's a joke issue. Among the stories today was one about football written by "Bill Murray" and headlined, "Coach Hughes sees shadow, delays spring practice six weeks." It included this:

Others wonder if Hughes’ decision isn’t in response to feeling bad about his former team, Dartmouth, losing all 10 of its games this year, making sure the Detroit Lions weren’t the only team to go defeated in 2008.

“I mean, we could definitely use all the help we can get,” Dartmouth head coach Buddy Teevens said.

Ouch.