{"id":84993,"date":"2020-04-04T09:45:54","date_gmt":"2020-04-04T13:45:54","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/webapp2.wright.edu\/web1\/newsroom\/?p=84993"},"modified":"2024-01-04T14:49:09","modified_gmt":"2024-01-04T19:49:09","slug":"ddn-archdeacon-wright-state-athletics-still-hands-on-even-with-rubber-gloves","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/webapp2.wright.edu\/web1\/newsroom\/2020\/04\/04\/ddn-archdeacon-wright-state-athletics-still-hands-on-even-with-rubber-gloves\/","title":{"rendered":"Dayton Daily News: Archdeacon: Wright State athletics still \u2018hands-on,\u2019 even with rubber gloves"},"content":{"rendered":"

Excerpt<\/strong><\/em><\/p>\n

\"\"

The Wright State volleyball team, Athletics administrators and Wright State University President Sue Edwards at Athletic Director Bob Grant’s home last fall.<\/p><\/div>\n

\u201cIt\u2019s a contact sport.\u201d<\/p>\n

Bob Grant said that a few times during our conversation, but he didn\u2019t mean it in a football, wrestling and rugby sort of way.<\/p>\n

The Wright State athletics director was referring to personal contact: hugging, hand shaking, going out for ice cream and lunches and coming over for dinner, sometimes even steak.<\/p>\n

And for the past three weeks \u2013 as the coronavirus has put our lives and, most noticeably the college sports world in an ever-tightening vice grip \u2013 Grant and his staff have had to come up with virtual open houses, FaceTime calls and, three days ago, a drive-through luncheon for all the Raiders athletes still in the area.<\/p>\n

\u201cOur culture is very different than most places,\u201d Grant said of his department which oversees 14 sports and 250 student athletes. \u201cWhether you think it\u2019s good or bad, it\u2019s definitely different. We\u2019ve got a super hands-on approach and everybody in the athletic department is wired that way.<\/p>\n

\u201cWe\u2019re not out-spending people for success and we\u2019re not out-branding people,\u201d said Grant, who is a Wright State graduate himself and was an assistant under former WSU athletics director Mike Cusack for several years.<\/p>\n

After he took over the program a dozen years ago, he began to push an initiative he calls PSA \u2013 People, Students, Athletes.<\/p>\n

\u201cWe focus on the people first,\u201d he said. \u201cThe student part is second and the athlete, third. We believed happy, healthy student athletes would be more productive and boy has that ended up being true.\u201d<\/p>\n

He said Wright State athletics \u2013 even though the program regularly spends less annually than almost every other NCAA Division I program in Ohio \u2013 has had unprecedented success over the past three years, both in its sporting competitions and in its classroom performances.<\/p>\n

Men\u2019s and women\u2019s basketball, baseball. volleyball and soccer all have enjoyed their best seasons in school history. All have sent teams to the NCAA Tournament. Men\u2019s soccer was nationally ranked during most of last season and baseball, an annual 40-game winner and perennial NCAA Tournament team, has been recognized as the best program in the state.<\/p>\n

Coaches and players have received many of the Horizon League\u2019s top individual honors and for the first time ever Wright State was awarded the 2019 McCafferty Trophy, which honors the best athletic program in the conference.<\/p>\n

In the classroom, WSU student athletes as a group are carrying a 3.0 grade point average and 87 percent of them are graduating.<\/p>\n

So if the \u201csuper hands-on\u201d approach is working, what happens when those hands get covered with rubber gloves and everybody must step back six feet or, better yet, just stay in their own house?<\/p>\n

\u201cYeah, when have a culture like ours, what happens when that all comes to an abrupt halt?\u201d Grant said.<\/p>\n

Read the entire story at daytondailynews.com<\/a><\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

Excerpt \u201cIt\u2019s a contact sport.\u201d Bob Grant said that a few times during our conversation, but he didn\u2019t mean it in a football, wrestling and rugby sort of way. The Wright State athletics director was referring to personal contact: hugging, … Continue reading →<\/span><\/a><\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":21,"featured_media":85001,"comment_status":"closed","ping_status":"closed","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[730],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-84993","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","hentry","category-wright-state-in-the-news"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/webapp2.wright.edu\/web1\/newsroom\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/84993","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/webapp2.wright.edu\/web1\/newsroom\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/webapp2.wright.edu\/web1\/newsroom\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/webapp2.wright.edu\/web1\/newsroom\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/21"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/webapp2.wright.edu\/web1\/newsroom\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=84993"}],"version-history":[{"count":3,"href":"https:\/\/webapp2.wright.edu\/web1\/newsroom\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/84993\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":145345,"href":"https:\/\/webapp2.wright.edu\/web1\/newsroom\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/84993\/revisions\/145345"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/webapp2.wright.edu\/web1\/newsroom\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/85001"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/webapp2.wright.edu\/web1\/newsroom\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=84993"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/webapp2.wright.edu\/web1\/newsroom\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=84993"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/webapp2.wright.edu\/web1\/newsroom\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=84993"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}