I (virtually) sat down with Ricky Ray, the newly hired Director of Athletics to get to know him and his game plan for the Hatters to knock it out of the park this season.
Where did your love of sports initially come from?
I grew up in Raleigh. So right in the middle of ACC country with Duke, North Carolina and NC State all in there. I was exposed early to a great sports scene. I remember going to NC State games as a kid and thinking it was the coolest thing ever, it’s the atmosphere and the whole deal. I was always interested in it and had some opportunities in high school, to do some different things outside of playing like working games. It was the same thing when I got to college when I had an opportunity to work in the athletic department. It’s gone from there and hasn’t really stopped yet. It’s been a lot of fun.
What inspired you to take your love of sports and pursue it as a career?
I didn’t realize that I could do that. In undergrad, I got to see the inner workings of how everything runs and the effect that higher ups can have on students in their athletes, not just playing or coaching. And I had a couple of those people at Campbell University, coaches and people on staff that were really good to me as far as making me feel like part of the program. They let me kind of see the difference that I could make. It was awesome and a great experience. And our industry is still very much a ‘who you know’ type thing so the first job I got was because my boss there knew somebody and it’s just kind of gone from there. I’ve always enjoyed being on campus. I think it’s one of the coolest places you can work. Just because there’s always so many things going on, it’s so vibrant. You also get to be on campus and get to meet so many different people. It’s a perfect mix.
What are your goals for Stetson athletics?
First and foremost it’s about making sure that our students have a good experience. And I’m always careful to say students. I want our student athletes to have great experiences, obviously, I’m around them more, I can affect them more. But I think there’s things in athletics we can do to affect the entire community and make our events more appealing for students. Whether that’s creating work opportunities or creating these chances for our students to be more involved. Everybody says that line that ‘athletics is the front porch of the university.’ I want to make sure that our front porch is invited. We want our community to be a part of what we’re doing, whether that’s students, faculty, staff or the greater DeLand community. We want to make this a department that everybody can be proud of and that everybody can have a piece of to feel like they belong.
What have kind of been your immediate priorities as you’ve stepped into this role?
As we move into this next academic year the goal is to build off the success we just had. We won three conference championships this year, basketball, baseball, and women’s tennis. We went to an NCAA tournament in men’s golf for the first time ever. There’s a lot of success taking place. A couple other ones weren’t championship games but we were right on the cusp of doing some pretty special things. It’s all about finding how we can get just over that edge and really push forward. It’s been exciting to get in and explore it. If we can take advantage of what we accomplished last year, take advantage of the interest because of the basketball run, you only get the one first time. We’ve got to take advantage of that and continue to grow on the right path. Some of the longer term strategies are to grow our fan base, make the games more interesting, more exciting and just get people on board.
How has successes such as the men’s basketball team making it to the NCAA tournament for the first time served as motivation for the athletics department going forward?
Anytime, athletics as a whole, is successful, it’s going to help the institution, period. And that can mean 100 different things, it brings more eyeballs, brings more Google searches, brings more applicants and brings more people in our space to see what we’re doing. If they’re on our campus to go to a basketball game, they’re going to see that we’re building a new dorm. They’re going to see all the other things we’re doing. It’s all tangible. The same thing as you get three championships, all of a sudden, everybody else in the department wants to add one. If we can win three or four this year it’s just going to keep building. It shows that when we focus on what we have, instead of what we don’t have, the sky’s the limit on what we can do. We can go play UConn on national TV.
What kind of changes are being made to overcome challenges within the athletics department?
It’s a wild time. In general and in college athletics. I think the transfer portal has changed a lot of things, it’s changed a lot of the way we have to conduct business because we can’t ever stop recruiting. We have to recruit kids out of high school, kids that are in the portal and the kids that are already on your roster. We’re never stopping. With those, it puts a lot of emphasis on the experience and the relationships that you’re having with your student athletes. There’s this house settlement and a lot of stuff going on with the NCAA that means we’re gonna lose a lot of revenue. We’re all having to figure out how to make do with a little less. It has changed the game. From my chair, I’m curious now. The people that would give and donate to building projects in the past or operating budget, now have to decide to donate to NIL to help keep players. It’s a really unique and challenging time. I still think that there is plenty of room in the model for people that just want to come get an education and play their sport. That gets lost sometimes.
How do you plan on improving the overall student athlete experience at Stetson?
The fastest thing we can do is be aware of what challenges they’re facing. Mental health is a massive topic right now. As it should be. I’m fortunate, I grew up in an era without social media. I cannot imagine what that’s like, how that affects you, having that in your entire, essentially existence and then having to cope with all of the challenges that brings on top of study, getting an education, playing your sport and trying to get better. It’s a lot. The positive thing is that people are actually talking about it now because they weren’t when I was in college. It’s anything we can do to try and make those resources more available. The same thing, again with nutrition. There’s these things that we haven’t gotten to yet or done in the past where we can really try to help. Sometimes nutrition just means making sure that after a late practice that the cafeteria is open. I think we must be cognizant of the challenges and be able to understand that the challenges are going to change. There’s going to be different stressors so it’s understanding how things ebb and flow. There’s things we can do as a department to try and help with some of these new challenges.
What excites you most about joining Stetson’s athletic department?
I think that our best is yet to come. In my experience, athletic departments have their peaks and valleys. We had a couple of things happen last year that had never happened, which is great. That means we’re on the right track. That will give us the space to now try to grow and try to do the things that can help make the institution proud. We’re all going to grow and learn together. From a personal standpoint, it’s really cool to be surrounded by people that are all getting after it and are not scared to try new things because I think that’s what can separate us a little bit. It’s the people I met during the hiring process. It’s the people who show how incredible the school is. You can tell there’s a lot of heart for the place, the people are here to love it. To me that energy can solve a lot of problems right off the bat.
What impact do you want to have?
It sounds cliche but the biggest goal is to leave this place better than I found it. From my standpoint, the thing I can bring is some fresh eyes, some new ideas. I’ve told our staff, I’m going to ask a lot of questions and not to interpret those questions as me being negative. I’m trying to figure out why we do what we did. It’s finding a way to do it more efficiently. It’s making those incremental gains, that when you look back at the end, and you think, wow, I really did a lot. I haven’t been here all that long but I still haven’t made up enough ground in my mind. I get to work on my patience. I want to make it a place that our coaches and our student athletes and our staff are proud of. They continue to do everything in our power to help grow the overall brand, grow the name, get John B. out there and get the whole deal out there to help us grow enrollment. I want to do my part to keep the institution thriving.
