They All <i> Arrived</i> at SDSU

How to plan for the future, Part I:

Yell at your boss. Maybe it will impress him.

Editor’s disclaimer: No! We do not encourage this! Continue.

Anyway, John Wadas tried yelling at his boss 20 years ago and today has a good job at San Diego State. And he works for that same fellow--Fred Miller. Miller is now SDSU’s athletic director, and Wadas is the senior associate athletic director.

But back then . . .

Wadas, a first-year wrestling coach at Cal State Long Beach, went to the gym to set up for a match one day only to find the junior varsity basketball team warming up for a game. In those days, they had both men’s and women’s gyms. Well, Wadas didn’t like what he saw in the men’s gym, so he decided to visit Miller, the athletic director.

“I came unglued,” he said. “I stormed down the hall to Fred’s office and said, ‘You say you support all sports. Well, the JV basketball team is going to the women’s gym, and wrestling is going to the men’s gym.’ The first time he ever called me coach was that night. He said, ‘You’re right, Coach.’ ”

Then, before the conference championships, Wadas went to Miller to ask for a few more bucks for his program.

Wadas told Miller he understood that finances were tight. But Wadas also pointed out that he was driving his own van, spending cash out of his own pocket for gas and, because of the small budget, could only afford two hotel rooms for the entire team.

Miller reminded Wadas that he had provided a budget of $1,200 before the season, told him to spend it how he saw fit, and then told him he didn’t want to see him again.

Now he was seeing him again.

Wadas paused. Miller had him, and he knew it. So he did about the only thing he could think of.

“I was cocky,” Wadas said. “I told him, ‘We’re going up and winning the damn thing.’ ”

They did.

“I must have impressed him, because he hired me when he went to Arizona State,” Wadas said. “I was the only one he took with him.”

Take a look around the SDSU administrative offices, and Wadas’ isn’t the only unusual story among the four people Miller has picked to fill spots as associate athletic directors. The three others include a former head trainer, a former businesswoman, and--ta da--a former world champion Frisbee player . Honest.

Introductions:

--Wadas was named as SDSU’s senior associate athletic director in 1986. He has worked with Miller at Cal State Long Beach, Arizona State and SDSU.

--Jim Herrick, associate athletic director for business affairs, is the Frisbee champ. He came to SDSU while still selling tickets for the Sockers in 1986 and was promoted to his current position in 1988.

--Don Kaverman moved into the associate athletic director/student-athlete services position in 1988 after spending two years as SDSU’s head trainer.

--Jayne Hancock, after spending five years in sports administration at USC, was in real estate when Miller tapped her to become the associate athletic director/senior woman administrator in 1988.

One of the most important aspects of Miller’s makeup is this: In his eyes, anything is possible.

“Beware of labels,” Miller said. “Why shouldn’t a trainer with good organizational skills have the opportunity to go do it? Because he’s labeled? I don’t buy it. I hate labels.”

When it comes time for Miller to fill a position, he has been known to surprise people. Organization is one of the key ingredients he seeks.

“That, and you look for insight and compatibility,” he said. “We’re not totally compatible. We see some heavy exchanges of opinion (in staff meetings). I’ll give people responsibility, and then I want to give them the authority to back it up.”

Said Kaverman: “It’s been highly educational, and quite a challenge. Fred is usually two or three steps ahead of people in his thinking. He is constantly challenging people. There’s never a dull moment. You can be sure he’ll be out there proposing something. . . .

“I think all of us like to think of ourselves as more than managers. There’s a difference between a manager and a leader, and I think all of us like to think we have leadership potential. Fred allows us to lead within our respective areas.”

Wadas was one of the first to discover that, way back when . . .

JOHN WADAS: WRESTLING WITH PROBLEMS

Wadas, originally from Berkley Heights, N.J., first met Miller in the late 1960s, when Wadas was a star wrestler at Long Beach. Before the 1970-71 school year, Miller asked if he would coach both soccer and wrestling. Wadas had one more year of eligibility left, but the wrestling team was in trouble. The coach had left, and Miller was thinking of dropping the program.

Wadas’ goal was to become a coach, and he and his wife agreed he shouldn’t pass up this opportunity. Problem was, Miller didn’t want a player-coach. Wadas would have to forfeit his final year of eligibility. He decided to coach, and in his first--and last--year as coach at Long Beach, his team won the championship of the old Pacific Coast Athletic Conference with just nine wrestlers--Wadas had kicked a heavyweight off the team.

Miller went to Arizona State in 1971 and brought Wadas with him. Wadas started as the wrestling coach and subsequently became an administrative assistant, assistant athletic director and associate athletic director.

During their years at ASU, Miller and Wadas oversaw the building of the university activities center, softball stadium and tennis stadium. The football stadium was expanded, and ASU obtained land for a golf course and money to build an aquatic complex.

But Wadas left Arizona State in 1983--two years after Miller was fired--to become athletic director at the University of South Florida in Tampa. He left when he found the right opportunity because Arizona State had passed him over when they named Miller’s successor.

“It was very hard on me emotionally,” Wadas said. “I put my soul into every brick and mortar (at the school). Following a dreamer is a hell of a lot of work. He gets ideas, somebody’s got to put them in motion. That’s why I’m out here. It’s because of him, not San Diego State.”

As for what can be accomplished with a little positive thinking and creativity, Wadas offers a story from his days at Arizona State.

He said he checked the athletic schedule one year and noticed that the ASU spring football game, an Arizona-ASU basketball game, a baseball game, a track meet and a tennis match had all been scheduled on the same day. He walked into a staff meeting and announced, “We’ve got a problem.”

“But Fred came up with the idea of ‘Super Sun Devil Saturday’,” Wadas said. “One ticket got you into Sun Devil events all day long, the concessions were busy. . . . One of the biggest screw-ups we ever had on the schedule turned into an unbelievable cash day.”

And it increased Wadas’ faith in Miller.

“Fred has unbelievable friends and relationships all over the country,” Wadas said. “What’s in it for Miami to schedule us (in football) for 18 years? That’s a friendship with Sam Jankovich (Miami athletic director). Why are we on ESPN? CBS? Fred pulled that off. Those are fun things to be around. Fred makes things happen.

“I don’t think the town realizes, I don’t even think the school realizes, what (Fred) can accomplish and do.”

In January, 1988, while working at South Florida, Wadas had planned to take his family on a cruise. But he shifted gears and decided to take them to California when Miller convinced him to visit SDSU.

“After looking at the faces of my wife and kids when we got here, and after talking with Fred, the ultimate salesman, I decided to apply,” Wadas said. “I interviewed and . . . they hired me. Surprise, surprise. I figured with all of my background . . . I’ve done every conceivable job in this business, from working in the equipment room, travel, sports information. I’ve done them all.”

At SDSU, Wadas’ areas of responsibility include, among others, men’s basketball, the Aztec Athletic Foundation, corporate sponsorships and fund-raising. The fund-raising includes staging special events such as the John McEnroe-Jimmy Connors tennis exhibition last fall.

“He’s worked in every area of athletics,” Miller said. “His depth of knowledge is amazing.”

Said Jim Brandenburg, the men’s basketball coach: “He’s very loyal, a workaholic. He spends an inordinate amount of time to get the job done.”

Wadas’ workload has been reduced in the past year. Hancock now handles marketing, something that used to fall under Wadas’ jurisdiction.

“I was wearing too many hats when I got here,” he said. “We’re understaffed. There are a lot of jobs that need to get done--marketing, promotions, fund-raising, selling. We honestly don’t have enough people asking. I disagree wholeheartedly that the alumni are apathetic. They have to be asked, and we’ve got to be good.”

The obvious problem is that the Aztecs haven’t been all that good lately. Since a Holiday Bowl appearance in 1986, the football team has had just one winning season. The basketball team has had five consecutive losing seasons.

“When the team loses, it’s hard to sell to San Diego,” Wadas said. “It’s frustrating at times, trying to get the town to buy into Division I football and basketball. We have some great kids here working their fannies off. We haven’t been able to attract the town, make them believers yet. It’s taking longer than we would like.”

JIM HERRICK: THE FRISBEE CHAMP

How to plan for the future, Part II:

Jim Herrick was selling season tickets for the Sockers when Miller arrived at SDSU.

“I started reading about Fred and how he was going to sell a lot of football tickets,” Herrick said. “I called him up and said, ‘Sounds like you need me.’ ”

That was the beginning . . .

He was hired on a part-time basis in 1986 and has worked his way up.

True story: The first time Herrick and Miller met was at the World Frisbee Championships at the Rose Bowl in Pasadena. Miller was an ESPN commentator at the time.

Herrick had met Van Miller, Fred’s son, in 1980 on a professional Frisbee tour. Two years later, Herrick was part of an Ultimate Frisbee team from Boston that won the U.S. National championship and then traveled to Gotenburg, Sweden to win the world championship in 1983.

Herrick, originally from Wellesley, Mass., graduated from Cornell in 1976 and got his MBA from there in 1977. He has managed a supermarket, sold plastic thermal-formed packaging in New York . . . and then decided he needed to do something else.

“I was 28, 29 years old and decided I wanted to be involved in sports. I was too into sports to do anything else. I had a nice company car, salary, but what I wanted to do was be interested in my career. I basically blew off a good career path.”

So he wouldn’t starve, he got jobs selling cable television in Massachusetts, Florida, Connecticut and California. And he played Frisbee.

He met the woman who would become his wife at a 1984 Frisbee tournament in La Mirada. She was from San Diego, and Herrick wound up here, selling cable television.

That led to his stint with the Sockers. He was driving by the San Diego Sports Arena one Friday afternoon when he got an idea.

“I went in the Sports Arena under the pretense of a Frisbee halftime show, but I wanted to scope out (sales),” he said. “I walked in and demanded that if they had people on commission, I could do it. Everything just fell into place beautifully. It was a Friday afternoon, and they told me to come back Monday and start. I was pretty lucky for a guy who blew off his career at 29.”

But his career path would take another twist. Herrick and Van Miller had stayed in touch, and soon Fred Miller was hired at SDSU.

“Once his father got the job here, Van was on me (to contact Fred),” Herrick said. “But in all reality, once I had interviewed . . . the connection certainly was a coincidence, but I felt so certain that I was the right person they needed at the time. Fred is not the type of guy who would hire me because I’m friends with his son. That’s not how he got where he has. By the time I applied for the assistant athletic director job, on paper I was as good as the other candidates.”

So Herrick set up a meeting with Miller and Al Luginbill, then an associate athletic director and now football coach. They hired him on a part-time basis during the winter and spring of 1986. Herrick worked both jobs--the Sockers and SDSU--every day.

By June, 1986, Herrick was hired full-time by SDSU as an assistant athletic director for marketing and promotion. He helped on special events and with the Aztec Athletic Foundation. In 1988, he was promoted to his current position.

Herrick still plays Frisbee in his spare time. He earned $4,000 by winning the 1988 U.S. Open championship in La Mirada.

“I was fortunate it took me until I was 33 years old to experience success playing Frisbee,” Herrick said. “By then I was mature enough to not foolishly think I could make a living out of it.

“Now it’s a hobby. I know what my job is and what Frisbee is. It’s fun to take a week off and go play in the tournament.”

As associate athletic director for business affairs, Herrick has several chores he needs to do every day: review all of the paper work, purchase orders, travel requirements and the gifts airlines and hotels dole out to coaches and teams.

“A lot of times, I’m the bad guy who has to say no, but you have to do things by the book,” he said. “If not, (NCAA) sanctions will compromise the athletic experience.”

Miller calls him the “velvet hammer.”

“He can say no as well as anybody I’ve ever seen,” Miller said. “I like working with the guy. He’s a straight-shooting son of a gun. He tells you no softly, not confrontationally. That’s an art form. Everybody likes Jim Herrick. In the area of business affairs, to be liked is unusual.”

DON KAVERMAN: TRAINER STEPS UP

One day, Kaverman was the head athletic trainer. The next, he was one of the guys in charge of the athletic department. Strange transition, but . . .

“I think it surprised people, but the proof is in the pudding,” Miller said. “He has done a great job.”

Said Luginbill: “Great attention to detail. . . . He makes sure everything we need to be a Division I player is there. There are so many things in the bureaucracy we work in that can get in the way, and he helps smooth that process.”

Kaverman has been forced to learn how to juggle jobs. He is in charge of baseball, football, softball, scholarships and housing and compliance with NCAA and Western Athletic Conference rules.

“It’s a position in which you either have the capacity to pick up on things or you don’t,” Kaverman said. “It’s like anyone who picks a new position and goes to work with a new company. He’s either going to be a success or he’s not. You either have the inherent skills or you don’t. . . . “

Kaverman also works with Jim Malik, SDSU’s faculty athletics representative, regarding athletes’ eligibility, and also administrates the athletic medicine department, the equipment rooms, the drug testing and education program and athletic department personnel.

Compliance, though, is one of his biggest challenges.

“Every time you think you understand what’s going on, the NCAA has another convention,” he said. “It requires you to stay on your toes, double-check and not be afraid to pick up the phone. . . .

“At this level, we’re primarily facilitators. Fred’s the idea guy. We like to think we come up with one now and then. By virtue of his experience, he’s usually a couple of steps ahead of his peers. We do everything we can to support him and make sure his ideas become a reality.”

Kaverman has an undergraduate degree in business and says he has always been administratively oriented.

“He’s so well-organized and efficient,” Miller said. “The evolvement of our whole sports training concept was due to Don.”

Kaverman arrived at SDSU in 1986. He was born in Grand Rapids, Mich., and graduated from Michigan State in 1975 with accounting as his major. He got his master’s degree in physical education with a specialty in athletic training two years later.

He worked at Northwestern in 1976 and 1977--taking his master’s courses at MSU by correspondence--and then joined the Detroit Lions as an assistant athletic trainer.

“No. 1, to work at that level . . . professional football staffs are close-knit and small,” he said. “And you wear more than one hat. Hats a typical athletic trainer might wear include travel, working with the draft, scouting.”

But Kaverman was looking ahead, and he wasn’t sure he liked what he saw. After four years with the Lions, he didn’t think he would get promoted quickly enough to suit him.

He left in 1980 to go to Ferris State in Big Rapids, Mich. as the head trainer. A Division II school, it planned to expand its athletic medicine program.

Meanwhile, Denny Stolz, the former Michigan State football coach, accepted the job as SDSU football coach in 1985. Stolz and Kaverman had worked together at Michigan State from 1973-1975.

Kaverman came out to interview for the head trainer’s job at SDSU in May, 1986, and was hired in June, 1986.

He knew Stolz and assistants Dan Underwood and Steve Fairchild when he arrived. Underwood and Fairchild had both coached at Ferris State. Still, it was a traumatic move because his wife was 8 1/2 months.

It paid off, because in 1988, when Miller decided to remove Stolz and move Luginbill into the football coach’s office, Kaverman got his opportunity. He filled Luginbill’s former role as an associate athletic director.

“My move was probably more dramatic,” Kaverman said. “Being a head athletic trainer and moving to an associate AD at a Division I school is not typical.

“I appreciated at the time, and still do, Fred’s confidence in me to provide me with this opportunity. I’d like to think I haven’t let him down.”

JAYNE HANCOCK: LOOKING FOR GROWTH

Kaverman wasn’t the only associate athletic director to take a circuitous route to SDSU. Jayne Hancock was hired in 1988 after 3 1/2 years at VMS Realty Partners, working in both Los Angeles and Chicago. She was the vice-president and national marketing and communications director when Miller hired her.

“That impressed me a whole lot,” Miller said. “I like people to come in from the private sector--you get a different perspective.”

Not that she didn’t have sports experience. As an undergraduate from Phoenix, she played softball at Arizona. She went to graduate school at USC and was an assistant director of intramural sports in 1981 and 1982 before becoming an assistant athletic director of women’s programs at USC from 1983-1985. She also was director of ticket operations and protocol liaison for the Los Angeles Olympic Organizing Committee in 1984--while working at USC.

But after three years as an assistant athletic director for the Trojans, Hancock didn’t see any growth opportunity. Barbara Hedges, an associate athletic director and close friend of Hancock’s family, wasn’t going anywhere, and Hancock felt she needed to make a decision.

“I felt it was time to get out of the walls of the university and maybe progress a little bit financially,” Hancock said.

She got an offer from VMS and took it.

“It was a very tough thing for me to do, leave Barbara and the university,” she said. “It was scary, and my heart was pulling against leaving athletics. But I knew I’d be back.”

The job started in Los Angeles, but she was offered a promotion in late 1987, and it took her to Chicago. She handled marketing and communication and even placed clients in VMS office buildings around the country.

“I kid myself now,” Hancock said. “I was basically filling up office buildings instead of filling up stadiums.”

Hedges and Mary Roby, an associate athletic director at Arizona, would call her from time to time, keeping her posted on job openings. She subscribed to NCAA News, paying attention to teams, athletes, coaches and jobs.

“Nothing really knocked me over,” she said. “But I was in the position where I needed to make a decision. If I had waited much longer I would have (a) been gone too long and (b) been on a path where I couldn’t come back.”

Hancock knew she wanted two things. She wanted to get back into sports at a Division I level, and she wanted to come back to the West. When the SDSU job opened, she was interested. She had heard of Fred Miller through her Arizona connections.

“I knew about Arizona State,” she said. “The facilities, the tremendous strides it took . . . the talk was always about Fred Miller. And when Barbara Hedges says Fred is a great guy to be around and terrific to work for, that meant a lot to me.”

Hedges and Roby--along with Judy Holland of UCLA--recommended Hancock to Miller.

By late 1988, Hancock had been hired. Once that was done, she began to learn the meaning of patience.

“There’s the transition, where you get to know people, and they get to know you,” she said. “It’s tough. When you’re in a new place, it really takes a year to feel comfortable, and it probably takes people that long to feel comfortable with you.

“Fred made me feel comfortable right away, and the coaches on the staff did, too. That’s been the good part. Those are the kinds of people I missed in the private sector.”

Said Beth Burns, SDSU women’s basketball coach: “She’s like the Marines--she does more before 9 a.m. than most people do all day. We both operate the same way. We’re both overachievers who don’t accept no.”

Hancock’s duties have been expanded. When she first arrived at SDSU, she was the senior women’s administrator. She still is responsible for that area but now is also involved in marketing.

“We needed some help, and Fred asked me if I’d mind giving up some sports programs to help,” Hancock said. “I wholeheartedly said I’d give it a shot. It gives me a chance to focus in another area.”

Hancock’s area of marketing includes advertising relating to football and basketball, communications, and ticket operations.

“We could all be geniuses if we had $100 million,” she said. “The tough part is with limited resources, balancing priorities and the business part. Keep the education objective and (other) priorities. That, in my opinion, is the exciting and challenging part.”

SDSU DEPARTMENT OF ATHLETICS ORGANIZATIONAL CHART FRED MILLER: Athletic Director

JIM HERRICK: Associate AD Business Affairs * Men’s / Womens Track & Cross Country * Budget * Travel * Business Operations * Expense Authorizations * State Purchase Orders * Key Requests * Work Orders * Staging: Football * Stagine: Men’s Basketball * Facility Maintenance

JOHN WADAS: Senior Associate AD AAf & External Affairs * Men’s Basketball * Men’s / Women’s Golf * Men’s / Women’s Soccer * Aztec Athletic Foundation * Corporate Sponsorships * TV Radio Agreements * Special Events Staging * Fund-Rasing * Courtesy Car Program * Aztec Murietta Ctr. * Endowment Program

JAYNE HANCOCK: Associate AD Senior Woman Administrator * Women’s Basketball * Men’s / Women’s Tennis * Men’s / Women’s Volleyball * Staging: On Campus * Facility Scheduling * Marketing * Sports Information * Athletic Ticket Office * Special Projects

DON KAVERMAN: Associate AD Studen-Athlete Services * Football * Baseball * Softball * Compliance: NCAA & Conference * Student-Athlete Admissions * Grants-In-Aid * Housing * Departmental Personnel Representative * Student-Athlete Academic Support Services Liaison * Eligibility * Athletic Medicine * Athletic Equipment * Strength Training * Drug Education & Testing * Student Activities Center Liaison * Special Projects