A History of Intercollegiate Athletics at Florida Institute of Technology from 1958 to 2023

A History of Intercollegiate Athletics at

Florida Institute of Technology from 1958 to 2023

By William K. Jurgens and William C. Potter

With contributions from

Father Douglas Bailey

Dr. Anthony J. Catanese

Dr. Frank Webbe

Independently published

ISBNs

979-8-9889048-0-9 HC

979-8-9889048-1-6 SC

979-8-9889048-2-3 EPub

©2023 William C. Potter

Melbourne, Florida, U.S.A.

All rights reserved.

Table of Contents

Introduction

Timeline of History of Athletics at Florida Institute of Technology

Foreword by Dr. Anthony J. Catanese, Ph.D., FAICP

Foreword by Father Douglas Francis Bailey, SDS

Chapter One: The Founding of Florida Institute of Technology, Nee Brevard Engineering College, 1958-1964

Chapter Two: Introducing Intercollegiate Athletics at Florida Institute of Technology: 1965 to 1976

Chapter Three:  Highlights of Bill Jurgens as Athletics Director

Chapter Four: Folliard Transforms Basketball at Florida Tech and Mims Builds a Legacy

Chapter Five:  Stottler Brings Soccer National Championships to Florida Tech

Chapter Six: Reynolds Becomes an Institution

Chapter Seven: Men’s Rowing Becomes a National Power

Chapter Eight: Les Hall Builds a Baseball Program

Chapter Nine: How Title IX Shaped Women’s Collegiate Sports and Society

Chapter Ten: The Evolution of Women’s Sports at Florida Tech

Chapter Eleven: A Brief Experiment with Football

Chapter Twelve: Volleyball Perseveres

Chapter Thirteen: Track and Cross Country Make Their Marks

Chapter Fourteen: Lacrosse Comes to Florida Tech

Chapter Fifteen: Golf Wins Some Championships

Chapter Sixteen: Tennis Overcomes Obstacles

Chapter Seventeen: Fidgi and Women’s Soccer

Chapter Eighteen: Swimming Breaks Records

Chapter Nineteen: Nancy and Val Create Softball Excellence

Chapter Twenty: Women’s Rowing Makes a Splash

Chapter Twenty-One: Other Sports and Spirit Groups

Chapter Twenty-Two: Intercollegiate Athletics: The Added Value for Student Athletes and their Student Peers

Chapter Twenty-Three: The Impact of Volunteers

Chapter Twenty-Four: C0VID-19 and Intercollegiate Sports

APPENDICES

Bibliography

ABOUT THE AUTHORS

Acknowledgements

Introduction

By William C. Potter

I

ntercollegiate athletics in the United States are on the brink of confronting some issues that will determine whether intercollegiate athletics will remain relevant to the objectives of many colleges and universities. This is not necessarily a new development since concerns about the proper role of intercollegiate athletics within institutions of higher learning have persisted for several decades. As the revenue from intercollegiate sports has exploded for many universities, the temptation to compromise academic standards and to distort the historical role of athletics has become compelling. For many fans of college sports, the distinction between collegiate athletics and professional teams has become almost irrelevant. The pressure to field winning teams has frequently caused schools to discard academic standards, to invest enormous sums in athletic facilities and coaching salaries, and to lose sight of the idea that college athletes should be real students. Although one thinks of these issues as affecting primarily large schools in NCAA Division I athletics, even smaller schools in Divisions II and III have not been immune to these concerns.

These problems are now being exacerbated greatly by two more recent factors. The first of these factors arises from the rights that have been accorded college athletes to profit from their name, image and likeness (NIL). Again, this issue is generally thought of as being an issue affecting large Division I colleges, but, again, other schools are also faced with this issue. The expectation by college athletes that they will be able to earn income, in some cases very substantial income, from their NIL, is having a dramatic impact on recruiting and retaining college athletes. Florida Today newspaper reported on September 13, 2022, that NCAA President Mark Emmert acknowledged the organization’s inability to address this problem. Emmert admitted that, although the NCAA had adopted a broad rule that schools should not use NIL as a recruiting inducement, the rule was routinely ignored and the NCAA took no action to enforce it, recognizing that it was unlikely that it could prevail in litigation on the issue.

The Florida legislature addressed the NIL issue in 2020 when it followed several other states and enacted a statute codifying the rights of intercollegiate athletes to earn compensation in this manner. Section 1006.74, Florida Statutes, further requires any state university or college, or a private college or university that receives aid from the State of Florida, to provide at least two financial literacy, life skills, and entrepreneurship workshops, each at least five hours in duration, prior to the graduation of an intercollegiate athlete.

Florida Tech has adopted an NIL Policy that permits a student-athlete to receive compensation from a third party, but not from Florida Tech, in exchange for services, activities, intellectual property, appearances, or other value provided by the athlete so long as the compensation is not being provided in exchange for athletic performance. The policy also permits student-athletes to retain agents to assist them with NIL activity. 

Some have argued that the advent of NIL will have a positive effect on intercollegiate athletics by allowing student-athletes to remain in school rather than succumb to the lure of money in professional sports. An article in The Athletic by Stewart Mandel on June 7, 2023, urges college administrators to stop pretending that they are not engaged in professional sports.0F¹

If anyone harbors any remaining doubt about the incompetency of the NCAA, they need only look to the failure of the NCAA to deal with the NIL issue. In June 2023, the NCAA issued a memo mandating that schools in states whose laws conflicted with NCAA NIL rules are required to follow NCAA rules. That, of course, is in direct conflict with prior NCAA directives to comply with state law in the event of a conflict. 

Perhaps even more alarming is the fact that the National Labor Relations Board has filed an unfair labor practice claim against USC, the PAC-12 and the NCAA seeking to classify college athletes as employees rather than student-athletes. Additionally, two pending lawsuits against the NCAA, House v. NCAA and Johnson v. NCAA, seek relief that would abolish limits on athlete compensation and classify athletes as employees. A declaration classifying college athletes as employees rather than student-athletes would fundamentally alter the relationship between coaches and their teams and irrevocably change the very nature of college athletics.

The second recent factor impacting college sports is the NCAA transfer portal. The relative ease with which an athlete can leave one school and transfer to another is a game-changer for college sports. Athletes now can transfer between institutions for the most trivial of reasons or for no reasons whatsoever. This may be more equitable for athletes, but it dramatically changes the relationship between coaches and athletes and between institutions and their athletes. It makes the challenge of recruiting and retaining student-athletes an even more tenuous task. 

The NCAA rules for Division II in all sports allow a one-time transfer without sitting out a year. The NCAA transfer portal is a database which facilitates the process for student-athletes seeking to transfer between member institutions. It allows student-athletes to place their names in the on-line database by notifying their current school of their desire to transfer. The current school must then place the name of the student-athlete in the database within 2 days. Once the name has been entered, then coaches and staff members of other schools are free to make contact with the student-athlete. 

A guest essay in the New York Times on March 23, 2023, by John I. Jenkins, president of the University of Notre Dame, and Jack Swarbrick, Notre Dame’s director of athletics, noted about college athletics: It faces threats on a number of fronts: the growing patchwork of contradictory and confusing state laws regulating it, the specter of crippling lawsuits, the profusion of dubious name, image and likeness deals through which to funnel money to recruits, the misguided attempts to classify student-athletes as employees. Underlying all that is the widespread belief that college athletics is simply a lucrative business disguised as a branch of educational institutions.

It is too early to know with certainty the long-term effects that these developments will have on intercollegiate athletics, but it does seem certain that the relationship between players and their universities has been changed forever. These developments account for part of the incentive that Bill Jurgens and I felt to write this book. We felt that the history of athletics at Florida Institute of Technology, a private university of modest size with limited financial resources and somewhat rigorous academic standards might provide some value in analyzing the future direction of intercollegiate athletics. Hopefully, the book will provide some useful lessons as we relate the challenges faced by Florida Tech as it instituted its athletic programs in the early 1960’s and labored during the ensuing fifty-plus years to sustain and grow those programs in a manner consistent with the mission and goals of the university. The essential message of this history will be that the athletics program must be consistent with the overall mission of the institution. It may well be the greatest accomplishment of athletics at Florida Tech is that it has remained consistent with the academic objectives of the university and has fulfilled its role of supporting the mission of the institution by providing lessons to student-athletes that are consistent with and complimentary to the classroom lessons of these student-athletes.

The second incentive for writing this book is, of course, the retirement of Bill Jurgens. Bill served as Athletics Director at Florida Tech for nearly fifty years. It is fair to say that the athletics program at the school is the product of the vision of Bill Jurgens. In my view, Bill had a vision for intercollegiate athletics that is worthy of emulation. Bill understood that intercollegiate athletics should support, rather than supplant, the academic objectives of the university. Bill also understood that the athletics program should live within the available resources of the institution. Bill’s influence and his philosophy of intercollegiate athletics reached beyond Florida Tech.  As the chair of athletics directors in the Sunshine State Conference, Bill placed his indelible imprint upon the conference as he strived to assure that the conference maintained the proper view of its role within its member institutions. Similarly, Bill conveyed his ideas and philosophy upon the Dad Vail Regatta, the largest intercollegiate rowing event in the nation, where he served as a director for many years and continues to serve. Thus, Bill’s retirement seemed to be a propitious time to record for posterity the lessons to be learned from his tenure at Florida Tech. 

This book has a couple of objectives. One is to recognize those individuals who have had an impact on the athletics program at Florida Tech and, most importantly, an impact upon the lives of the thousands of student-athletes whose lives have been enriched because of their participation in athletics at the university. Florida Tech was founded only in 1958 with limited financial support, and the athletics program was founded just a few years later. The success that the program has experienced is quite remarkable when one considers its young age and limited resources. It has been able to achieve success and positively affect the lives of those student-athletes because a number of selfless individuals have devoted their time, energy, and skills to the program and the student-athletes. It is only fitting that those individuals should be recognized, and their efforts recorded for posterity.

The second objective is to illustrate an example of how an athletics program can be managed in a manner that fulfills the supportive and complementary role, consistent with the primary goals of the university, that an intercollegiate athletics program ought to provide. The fact that the program is relatively young and has succeeded with a limited financial foundation makes these lessons even more useful. It is my hope that the book may cause some readers, particularly those able to influence the direction of intercollegiate athletics, to consider the appropriate role of intercollegiate athletics within a post-secondary institution and to use their influence to ensure that athletics fulfill that appropriate role. 

Author’s Notes

The university was founded in May 1958 as Brevard Engineering College. In March 1965, the name of the institution was changed to Florida Institute of Technology. Since changing its name in 1965, it has been commonly referred to as both F.I.T. and Florida Tech. Throughout this book, those names will be used interchangeably.

Since chapters of this book have been contributed by various authors, the reader may discern some differing interpretations of events and even conflicting conclusions about the merits of some activities and occurrences. We have made no attempt to reconcile these differences or conflicts since it is to be expected that different individuals will interpret events differently. We will leave it to the reader to determine the relative weight of these views.

Timeline of History of Athletics at Florida Institute of Technology

This aerial photo shows several of the varsity athletic facilities. The white building in the lower right corner is the Clemente Center with the Panther Aquatic Center to its left. In the upper left corner is the Bottge softball field with the practice field to its right and the Catanese Varsity Training Center to the right of the practice field. The dirt field on the left side of the photo is the Stottler soccer/lacrosse field which was undergoing resurfacing at the time of this photo. The Hall-Seminick baseball field is to the right of the soccer/lacrosse complex. The Wakefield batting practice facility is between the softball field and the soccer/lacrosse complex.

Photo by William Potter.

Foreword by

Dr. Anthony J. Catanese, Ph.D., FAICP

Photo from University Archives.

A

thletics at the college and university level have been a major part of American culture for a long time. Most would agree that collegiate athletics was organized in the mid-19th Century when universities began to develop sports at the club level. Then in the 1880's, athletics took on a more formal organization. I would argue that it became significant on 6 November 1869 when Rutgers University played football against Princeton University. The game, sort of a combination of soccer and rugby at that time, was won by Rutgers with a score of 6 to 4. Other colleges took notice and started to issue challenges. Football grew rapidly and tremendous rivalries were started. The games became so intense, and injuries common, that President Theodore Roosevelt later called for restrictions on the game.

In 1906, the National Collegiate Athletics Association (NCAA) was created in part to deal with these issues but also to set up the rules and regulations for college athletics.  Overall, the ideal was to create the so-called level playing field. While the early football teams often had non-students, and some were even paid to perform, the NCAA would change that. Players must be students, hence the term student-athlete came into being. Players could receive scholarships to help pay for the education, but they were not to receive compensation or special treatment. They were there to get a college education first and play football or other sports as a secondary undertaking. The NCAA was a group of voluntary member colleges, but championships could only accrue to members.

Football became the bedrock of intercollegiate athletics by the 1920's, but slowly other sports came into being and popularity. To create an even more level playing field, divisions were created by the NCAA ranked primarily on size of the student body as well as funding. Funding became a major part of university budgets. Revenues from ticket sales, alumni gifts, student recruiting, and general fund-raising evolved. With the advent of mass media, college athletics became a major financial enterprise for universities. Events such as the National Championship for Football and the Final Four for Basketball became multimillion-dollar undertakings. With the recent additions of social media, streaming, and cable/ROKU/satellite, college athletics have become big business. At some colleges, expenditures and revenues of over a hundred-million dollars a year are frequent.  The idealistic college president will soothe the faculty and students by passing along some of this money to academic uses, such as the library. Most of the surplus, however, would go to stadiums, field houses, locker rooms, and other athletic facilities. Athletics budgets have grown so large that it is common for top coaches in football and basketball to earn several times the annual salary of the president.

With all of this growth, and the wild devotion to your favorite college teams, and despite the best efforts of the NCAA, there has arisen great controversy of intercollegiate athletics. The major critique is that athletics takes away the attention and commitment for the academic mission. For many student-athletes, this is true.  Many athletes leave college to pursue professional careers in the National Football League (NFL) and National Basketball Association (NBA). While there have been modest efforts by the NBA, and few if any by the NFL, the top players usually go for the money. That is, after all, the rational choice, despite the NCAA credo.  How much then is the scholarship and even the degree worth to the best performers on the playing fields?

Some of the harshest critics say that college athletics in football and basketball is becoming the athletic trials for the NBA and NFL. Most other sports, such as baseball, have alternative ways to enter the professional ranks without going to college. A very small number of football and basketball players go directly to the professional ranks after age 18. NCAA rules for eligibility and continuing attendance are also changing, as will be discussed later. Degree completion rates for athletes are still held as a value, but they vary widely with colleges and majors, even by sport. As football coach Vince Dooley once said, I see nothing wrong with a college athlete getting some education while they are here that can be useful when their playing days are over.

When I became President of Florida Tech, this was all familiar to me. As an athlete myself, as well as an NCAA President's Council Member, I knew I would have quite a challenge. It was a highly selective university with tough majors such as engineering, science, and information technology, but no easy fields or courses. Florida Tech had achieved success in soccer and rowing, but it had a long way to go for conference and national recognition in athletics. That was the kind of challenge I wanted.

When I became President of Florida Tech in 2002, there were seven college athletics teams. The Men's Soccer Team had won two Division 2 NCAA championships in 1988 and 1991. The Men's Basketball Team had shared a Sunshine State Conference championship. The Men's and Women's Rowing Teams, however, were the best known nationally and even internationally. This was a fine base to build upon. When I retired as President in 2016, we had grown to 23 intercollegiate sports teams, including Football.

Why did I do this? There were several reasons in addition to my basic philosophy that athletics were an important tradition in American universities. I believe that sports add to the college academic experience. They can provide loyalty to the college, an ease to difficult studies, and fun. College sports can unite the many constituencies of the university—faculty, students, staff, alumni, advisory and governing boards, and the wider community. Sports do not distract from the scholarly mission if properly managed and directed—indeed, they add to the learning experience through teamwork, practice, and goal setting. College athletics programs that are successful and have integrity can enhance the reputation of the university amongst its peers. As the great Football Coach Howard Schnellenberger once told me: You can be compared academically by how you play athletically among your peer group. As I mentioned, some of my critics said that Florida Tech was too STEM-oriented to field good athletics teams. Having graduated Rutgers University, where it all started, and spending a good part of my career at Georgia, I did not agree with those pessimists. I resented the stereotype of the dumb jock in college athletics, and I wanted to counter it.

An important reason for my goals was to increase the number of women on campus and in the STEM fields of study. Florida Tech was a predominantly male institution when I started, and that was well reflected in the athletics programs. We took opinion surveys and found that the male students and athletes could not agree more on that idea. What better way to attract young women to Florida Tech than by adding several teams. We added women's teams in soccer, tennis, golf, lacrosse, swimming, diving, track and field, and cross country. By the time I left, we had more women athletes than men even counting football.

Several of my critics said that athletics were too expensive at a medium-sized school like Florida Tech. The most expensive sport, football, actually made money. The revenues from attendance at the games was among the Top Ten in NCAA Division II.

The other financial aspect, that too often is overlooked, is tuition income at a private school can increase with additional teams. The NCAA sets strict limits on the number of scholarships that can be awarded by sport. That means we had to distribute the scholarship money wisely and not everyone got one. Many players received partial scholarships. Many players did not have scholarships and paid tuition so they could play. We had to come up with academic scholarships to complement the athletic scholarships in many cases, so that meant we had to recruit good players who were also good students.

The number of students increased dramatically during my term, and much of it was related to intercollegiate athletics. While some of this was due to more athletes, we were happy to see that many came to Florida Tech because as one student told, Now it is a real college.  Also interesting, we found a significant increase in women who wanted to go to a school with a football team. The facts speak for themselves. In 2002 we had 3600 students seeking degrees. By 2016, there were 16,000 students seeking degrees. Was this cause and effect? Probably not. Much of it was due to the online and off-campus programs I added, but a lot of it was due to the athletics programs and the reputation it gave us.

The financial picture for athletics also proved my point. According to College Factual, a reputable group that measures expenses and revenues, college athletics at Florida Tech made money using their objective accounting, using all revenue sources and all expenses. They estimated average expenses of $12 million per year and average revenues of $13 million per year by 2016. Quite simply, the critics were wrong, and we were making at least $1 million per year.

Experience by leadership helps a lot. This was not my first rodeo. As President of Florida Atlantic University, I also expanded the athletics programs from 1989 through 2002. During that time, FAU grew from 10,000 students to 25,000 students, and two campuses were expanded to seven campuses over a five county South Florida Region. College athletics was a primary factor in giving these disparate campuses a common sense of loyalty and collegiality. A Division 1 Football Team was created, and Coach Schnellenberger became the Founding Coach. He established the record for the fastest rise to a bowl game in the NCAA. There is now a great Football Stadium on the Boca Raton main campus that attracts fans and is televised nationally. I upgraded Men's and Women's Basketball, and all FAU Teams, to Division 1. Again, being told that we could only be competitive in Division 1 Baseball, FAU Men's Basketball went to the Final Four in 2023. 

My experience at FAU taught me a lot about people in this business.  As a neophyte member of the NCAA President's Commission, I learned a lot from the great Notre Dame President Theodore Hesburgh. He taught me that the president's job is to hire the best coaches with the highest integrity and to make sure that they follow the NCAA Rules and serve as a role model for their players. I did that. I hired Schnellenberger, a national champion at Miami, for Football. I brought in the Orlando Magic's Sydney Green for Men's Basketball. I hired Chanceller Dugan for Women's Basketball. I brought in two Olympians, Bob Beemer for Track and Field and Marathoner Keith Brantly for all running sports. One of my proudest hires was the legendary Queen and her Court Pitcher, Joan Joyce for both Softball and Women's Golf. I learned definitively that coaches make the difference in intercollegiate athletics, just like Father Hesburgh told me.

I continued my lessons at Florida Tech, and the successes came flowing in. Daniela Iacobelli won the NCAA Singles Championship in golf in our first few years. She is now on the LPGA Tour. We had never expected that our players might become professionals, but we were pleasantly surprised. The Football Program had 18 All-Americans, three of whom went to play on Sunday with the NFL. We went to the Futures Bowl in West Virginia during our inaugural year and won. A highlight of my career and Florida Tech history was in 2014 when we played a top-ranked team at Dallas Cowboys Stadium and won.

We also won championships in Swimming and Diving as well as Track and Field. The Women's Golf Team later won the Division II National Championship. Even the teams that existed when I arrived excelled. The Men's Basketball Team won the Sunshine State Conference outright. The Women's Basketball Team went to the Division II Elite Eight. The iconic rowing teams won several Dad Vail Regatta rowing championships, placed well in the Intercollegiate Rowing Association National Championship, and won at the Head of the Charles regattas. They even were competitive at the Henley Royal Regatta in England.

This is all part of Florida Tech history, and Florida athletics lore, but most importantly, it is imbued in the memories of our student athletes.  Nobody can ever take that away from them.

One outstanding piece of athletics should be mentioned. We needed a lot of money to start Football. We started a Founders Club for 10 people who we asked to give $100,000.  We brought in some superstars to help. From the baseball world, we brought in our alumnus Tim Wakefield from the Boston Red Sox. Football greats like Heisman Trophy Winner Doug Flutie, Wisconsin Coach Barry Alvarez, Dallas Cowboy Tony Dorsett, and Coach Schnellenberger.  And we were successful.

We learned that the community loved Football and wanted to be a part of the story. Our attendance at the games, amongst the highest in NCAA Division 2, was mostly community, students, and alumni. Even overall fund-raising for the university greatly increased due in some degree from our higher visibility from college athletics.

There have been some major changes in recent years that provide challenges to the state of intercollegiate athletics.  They somewhat go against the traditional concept of the student-athlete as defined by the NCAA. The NCAA has always argued that college athletics were about higher education and not money. That viewpoint is now dubious with the advance of the Name, Image, Likeness (NIL) rules, regulations and laws which means that a student athlete can be compensated for the use of his/her name, pictures, and other forms of visual expression. Thus, the college athlete can now earn money because of their participation. On its face, this seems fair enough, but of course money changes everything. Agents, organizations, and businesses have come forth to help these individuals. Many universities have set up for-profit and/or non-profit entities to help or even exploit these opportunities. Football Coach Billy Napier of the University of Florida said that "this is the new arms race for the top students. Indeed, the quarterback of the University of Alabama is said to receive over a million dollars for his NIL. It clearly is now a major issue for the recruitment of top athletes and is a bidding war in many cases. Even sports like Gymnastics are finding huge payments for a student's NIL. Many critics of intercollegiate athletics say that this is the beginning of compensation for players. How far can that be since the principle has already been established. It sort of takes us back to 1869 when both Rutgers and Princeton were alleged to have paid non-students to play in the first intercollegiate football game. An even greater concern—how can the NCAA survive when its original premise has been rejected?

Another major change is the so-called Transfer-Portal. Staying true to its original student-athlete mission, the NCAA had rules that greatly controlled how a student could change colleges in order to play on another team with probably better prospects. Similarly, some students who had some eligibility for playing time left as a result of redshirt years or even graduation, had to follow the rules and either wait or sit out before they could play at another college, and even that with the coaches' permission. The Portal changed all that. Essentially, all a student-athlete now needs to do is declare for the Portal. Football Coach Deion Sanders of the University of Colorado has eliminated over half of the players he inherited in order to fill their slots with top players in the Portal. Many argue that this destroys the comraderies, team spirit, and loyalty of college athletes. Rather than take one for the team, in the old Win one for the Gipper norm, student-athletes now look out for number one. That is human nature, of course, but it does erase the nostalgia of the team spirit. Coupled with the loosening of turning pro rules and behavior, such as not playing in bowl games for fear of being injured before pro tryouts, as well as NIL, this is, if you will excuse the pun, a whole new game.

Some see this as an inevitable evolution of intercollegiate athletics with the advent of mass media, social media, streaming, pay-per-view, and cable/satellite television. There is simply too much money and fame to be ignored. Economists and Philosophers will state that this is rational behavior, and it is. The nostalgia and memories of the past are gone. It is sad, but it is reality. There is no doubt in my mind that professionalism will dominate intercollegiate athletics in the future.

This story does not have a happy ending for the Nation or Florida Tech. In my mind, much of the greatness in college sports has been diminished during the 2016 to 2022 administration that drastically cut the sports program in half. College athletics, coupled with pandemic cutbacks, drove leadership to seek other priorities. Now there is new leadership, and I am hoping that intercollegiate athletics will be a priority.

While I enjoy being told by alumni and community that I was President of Florida Tech during the Golden Years, I would rather be regarded as the father of a great university with a great intercollegiate athletics program. What would I change if I could? What would I do differently. I refer those questions to the late, great Hawaiian singer, Likui Lee.  His lyrics go something like this: If I had to do it all over again, I would do it all over again.

Dr. Catanese was the President of Florida Tech from 2002 to 2016.

Foreword by

Father Douglas Francis Bailey, SDS

Photo from University Archives.

Author’s Note

In any university, athletics have existed to encourage a strong mind in a strong body. At Florida Tech, we have included body, mind, and spirit. To that end, we have been very fortunate to have the services of our University Chaplain and Catholic Campus Minister, Fr. Douglas Bailey, SDS. He has been a part of the University and a part of athletics since 1983 until his retirement in 2020 and beyond. Fr. Bailey has been a mentor to and fan of Florida Tech athletes for the past 40 years. We have been blessed to have him lead our prayers at athletic banquets, award ceremonies and kick-off events. He has insisted that these prayers should be uplifting, inclusive, and earthy. The following is one example of his inspiring prayers.

S

teve Goodier has written about life lessons learned from racquetball. Life lessons can come from unexpected places. Here are some important lessons that have come from that court.

People play better when they’re encouraged. It’s true in life, too. People do better when they’re encouraged rather than criticized, condemned, and judged. 

When two or more people occupy a small space, they should learn to share. It goes for planets and classrooms and houses, too.

Pay attention. Those who lose their focus lose or at least get knocked upside the head. And those who are too distracted by yesterday or tomorrow will never live today full and joyously. Focus on the present.

The only way to score is to serve. Individuals and institutions that make a difference find ways to serve others. Those people are happiest and most satisfied with their lives have learned to serve. Great lives are built on service.

This caused me to think about life lessons that can be learned from other sports. For instance, in baseball on the field and soccer on the pitch, you learn how to become a team, a cohesive family. All throughout history, armies, countries, peoples, teams that have been united are the ones who succeed. The same goes for crew, you have to learn to work as one and to be in perfect balance, just as you must keep your life in balance.

In soccer, you also learn how to anticipate and not merely react.  You want to be where the ball or player is going to be and not where they are. In life too you don’t want to be merely reactive.

In tennis, you learn never to give up, not on the play, not on the game, not on yourself.

In baseball, it’s easy: sometimes you have to sacrifice to win and even if you play right field, you still get to bat.

In golf, you learn that all the