By BRAD FRANZ
Athletic Director
Q: As the director of athletics what responsibilities are you in charge of, and what does it feel to have the control of the athetic situation in our community?
A: I’m in charge of all athletic performances, and all athletic endeavors that can be from eligibility, game tier experience, recruitment, retention, all the different things that involve athletics.
The buck stops with me, and we’ve been very fortunate to have a great athletic program that put their effort into making it their best and doing it as productive as they possibly can, and I’m proud to be in charge of it.
Q: What challenges or difficulties is the football team facing in this season, and what could be a possible solution if there is something they need to improve in?
A: Well Coach Jones is doing a magnificent job at pulling this together. He took over a very downtrend situation a year ago. He wants to get it done and so he got the group rallied last year, we made a progress all year long, came back and had a tremendous recruiting year.
We are way better than before and we still are getting better than yesterday, the players that came back are more motivated than ever and it just takes a while to build a football team full of supportive members that are all focused on one goal, which is to do great and be the best and that doesn’t matter at what level, but the coach has been doing a fantastic job right now.
I listen to every one of his post-game speeches in which he always has some motivation to give, wether we are winning or loosing.
I talk to the players all the time and he is doing a great job on building this thing and it takes time.
Q: In what other sports are you interested in for a new imporvement into our athletic program, and are going to get anything new related to a new sports team any soon?
A: Well, we added men track a year ago and we had always had it planned that when we added women’s track six years ago that we would add men track when the time came, and we added it a year ago and that added 56 student athletes to our athletic department.
We’ve talked about tennis as a sport, but we talked about wrestling, we talked about men soccer and different things along the way.
We do not have anything in the plans right now of any other sports other than tennis has been one of them because we have some really good tennis courts over in Enid and we have the courts here.
Q: Are there any other sports seasons that you are excited for since football and volleyball allong with other activities, have already started their seasons, and what you think of the current results and scoreboards of these?
A: I’m excited where we’re at. Cross country has had a great run on both men and women side this year. Sterlin Bromfield is doing a great job.
Soccer, under Coach Piekarski, has been battling to win against Arkansa, really had the game won due to a two second call on us where they got a penalty shot, which is hard to do.
We’ve had great crowds at our soccer matches that been pleased. Volleyball is sitting in maybe the fourth or fifth spot right now.
We’ve had a six-game winning streak ongoing. Coach Bingesser and the girls have been doing a super good job. We took a tough lost against Southwestern the other day.
SAU and UAM coming in this weekend and they are two important matches against them, and rodeo won against Southeastern the other day.
We will host our rodeo in late October and early November, I think the 30 first through the second of November.
Men’s and women’s golf has been going on, and they won the OBU invite which was a great thing.
The women had the top golfer in the southern Missouri invite champions.
Basketball is just around the corner, they’re in full practice mode. First games are on November eight and ninth and that Is barely just 30 days away.
It is just at matter of time to be prepared to see our athletes show the potential they have been reserving for all of these practices.
This is a busy town but it is a fun time for all of our student athletes.
