N.C. State Director of Athletics Debbie Yow has made it her mission to bring the athletic department to perennial top-25 status. Coming off a campaign where the Wolfpack finished on the cusp of reaching its goal, Yow has clear ideas as to how the athletic department will overcome the challenges it faces and ultimately attain its stated aim.
Buoyed by a conference title in softball and the first appearance in the College World Series in 45 years by the baseball team, the Wolfpack finished 34th overall in the final 2013 Learfield Sports Directors’ Cup standings—the second-highest finish in school history, with a program-best 633.6 points. It was an incremental, yet solid improvement over N.C. State’s 37th place ranking and 576.6 points from the 2012 athletic season.
Entering her fourth year at N.C. State, Yow mixes pride at the accomplishments so far with a determination to cross the finish line.
“We have made enormous strides, overall, under the leadership of our coaches and the competent support of the senior management team,” Yow said. “We must maintain our focus and build additional momentum to ever become a national top-25 program.”
While the success of the school’s teams in the spring was heartening, Yow said a key component for expanding of its recent gains in the Director’s Cup standing will not come on the playing field but in the classroom.
“We continue to focus on improvements to our overall graduation rate,” Yow said. “Transferring a major is a challenge and that has negatively impacted our student athletes. Additionally, when coaching changes occur, there is a usual amount of attrition, which hurts the graduation rate. Carrie Leger [director of the academic support program for student-athletes] believes we will break 70 percent [graduation rate] in the 2014 report, which would be an all-time high mark for our campus student athletes.”
Yow hired Dave Doeren from Northern Illinois after the conclusion of the 2012 regular season to lead the N.C. State football program. In his first game-week press conference on Monday, Doeren touted his team’s performance in the classroom over the summer.
“The team is about a 2.80 [GPA] for the summer,” Doeren said. “That has helped raise our team GPA and it puts us in a position to have success in the fall. There are no players on the roster academically ineligible going into the fall. I am thankful not only for the work our players did, but for all of the academic support people who worked hard and made our guys do things the right way.”
N.C. State’s performance in the 2013 Director’s Cup final standings has the athletic program on the cusp of reaching its goal of breaking into the top-25.
“We try to match resources to expectations,” Yow said. “That means providing top-25 operating budgets and facilities, as well as competitive financial support in a number of key areas, and the best coaches and administrative team in the country. Our overall budget for 23 varsity teams is modest-to-average compared to others, but we continue to overachieve as we build the budget to have the chance to sustain a top-25 level of excellence. Stronger competitive outcomes and academic achievement remain the cornerstones of our strategic plan.”
