Dec. 1, 2007

As the Fall sports have come to a close, I am always reminded this time of year why we are all here. A long standing tradition in college sports is to honor all senior student-athletes at their last home games. The sports information staff does a nice job of compiling accomplishments for each and every senior. These notes are then read over the public address system and each student-athletes walks onto the field with family and friends as they are personally recognized. Without fail, these moments are always the most heart warming moments you can experience as a fan, a student-athlete, a coach or a family member. We collectively realize that this young person has indeed reached a major milestone in that he or she has completed four years of intercollegiate athletics and successfully balanced their academic and athletics pursuits. Without failure, I was once again filled with pride and joy for all our recognized seniors in the sports of cross country, volleyball and soccer.

Also, during the Thanksgiving holiday, many of our student-athletes and athletics staff members donated either time or funds to help those less fortunate. In particular, our baseball and men's golf teams were particularly generous in volunteering several hours of their time to prepare food boxes and distribute meals to needy families. A special campus wide message was sent out from Father Privett recognizing everyone's efforts including our teams' efforts. See the photo below of our student-athletes working in our War Memorial Gym lobby preparing the meal boxes.

We have been working hard in two important areas -- annual giving and corporate sponsorships. I believe these are two areas with a tremendous amount of "upside" for the Athletic Department. To achieve our ambitious goals for revenue generations we have set in motion several initiatives. Here is short list of some key action items that are underway:

• Reconstituted annual Team Funds. We are working with each sport program to establish annual fund raising goals and associated benefits in the form of individually named funds. This effort allows each coach to acknowledge sport specific donors on a consistent basis across all teams.

• Green and Gold Club membership refocus and expansion. We have been working closely with the Green and Gold Club volunteer leadership to establish open lines of communications and a focused effort to assist the Department of Athletics in its annual fundraising goals. Come join us for our Town Hall Meeting on Saturday, December 8th from 11:00am to 1:00pm in the Maraschi Room at Fromm Hall.

• Increase Corporate Sponsorships. I have been working closely with Jeff Menard, our Director of Marketing and Sponsorship, to increase our sponsorship involvement with USF Athletics in San Francisco. Mostly recently Jeff created an in game sponsorship opportunity with Best Buys where we were able to create a fundraising raffle to give away a PlayStation 3 as an in game promotion. At the end of the game, Best Buy was quite pleased with our efforts and the young 13 years old who won the PS3 was really happy.

The basketball season is well underway and we look forward to seeing you at a home basketball game soon.

Happy Holidays,

Debi Gore-Mann

Go Dons!