PENN STATE PAIR OF NCAA TITLES, FIVE BIG TEN CROWNS HIGHLIGHT 2015-16 In 2015-16, Barbour saw the Nittany Lions capture NCAA Championships in women’s soccer and wrestling and five Big Ten titles in women’s cross country, women’s soccer and wrestling. The women’s lacrosse team advanced to the NCAA semifinals for the first time since 1999 and was among six Nittany Lion programs that finished No. 6 nationally or higher in their respective NCAA Championship. Penn State student-athletes won four NCAA individual national championships and seven Big Ten individual crowns in 2015-16 and Raquel Rodriguez earned the MAC Hermann Trophy as collegiate soccer’s top female player. During Barbour’s initial two years of leading Penn State Athletics, the Nittany Lions have captured NCAA Championships in women’s soccer, women’s volleyball and wrestling and won nine conference titles (8 Big Ten). In December 2015, Forbes recognized Barbour twice among the top executives in sports. Barbour was named one of the Top 25 Most Powerful People in College Sports, ranking among six Athletic Directors and two female administrators on the list. Forbes said that Barbour “has developed a reputation for being one of the most forward thinking administrators in all of college sports.” Forbes also selected Barbour No. 11 among the Most Powerful Women in Sports. She was among four executives listed who work primarily in intercollegiate athletics and was the highest ranked Athletic Director — No. 2 overall in college sports. Barbour began her tenure in Happy Valley with a pair of championships during the 2014 fall semester and two more titles in the spring. The women’s volleyball team captured its second consecutive NCAA Championship and the women’s soccer squad earned the Big Ten crown during the fall. In the spring, the men’s gymnastics team earned the Big Ten title in front of an enthusiastic Rec Hall crowd, the women’s lacrosse squad won the inaugural Big Ten Women’s Lacrosse Tournament and the men’s volleyball captured the EIVA title. Penn State finished No. 8 in the 2014-15 Learfield Sports Directors’ Cup standings to cap Barbour’s first year. Twenty Nittany Lion squads competed in their respective NCAA Championships, the football team won the New Era Pinstripe Bowl, and 30 teams participated in post-season competition. Nine Penn State teams advanced to or finished in the Top/Elite 8 of their respective NCAA Championship in 2014-15. The Nittany Lions also captured individual NCAA titles in men’s fencing, men’s gymnastics and wrestling. Penn State student-athletes delivered record-setting academic performances during Barbour’s inaugural year, including the two highest 3.0 grade-point totals in a semester in school history at the time. During the 2014 fall semester, a school record 500 Nittany Lions earned at least a 3.0 grade-point average. Another mark was broken with 241 student-athletes garnering Dean’s List honors by posting a GPA of 3.50 or higher. The 2014-15 academic year was punctuated with the selection of wrestling national champion Matt Brown as the CoSIDA Academic All-American of the Year for all sports. TEN YEARS OF CONSISTENT COMPREHENSIVE EXCELLENCE AT CAL Serving as the Director of Athletics at Cal from 2004-14, Barbour guided the Golden Bears through one of the most successful periods in school history. Under her direction, the athletic department became one of the consistently elite programs in the country. Barbour’s 10-year term as AD was the longest tenure for the department since men’s and women’s athletics merged into a single entity in 1992. During her tenure overseeing Cal’s 30-sport program, the Golden Bears won 20 team national championships, 97 individual national titles, finished in the top 10 in the annual Learfield Directors’ Cup standings six times, including a program-best third in 2011, and reached record levels in ticket sales, sponsorships and fundraising.
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2016-17 PENN STATE WOMEN’S BASKETBALL
Among Cal’s many team athletic accomplishments under Barbour’s leadership were a 2006 Pac-12 co-championship and seven bowl game invitations in football; the men’s basketball team’s first conference title in 50 years in 2009-10; a first-ever NCAA Final Four berth in women’s basketball in 2013, two trips to the national semifinals in women’s volleyball and six NCAA Championships in men’s and women’s swimming and diving. Under Barbour’s leadership, two major facility projects designed to benefit both student-athletes and fans opened. On Sept. 1, 2012, Cal welcomed a soldout crowd to a newly restored California Memorial Stadium after the historic facility underwent a $321 million renovation and seismic retrofit to bring the facility up to modern standards while honoring the historic nature of the building. In 2011, Cal opened the Simpson Center for Student-Athlete High Performance, a 142,000-square-foot state-of-the-art student-athlete training, coaching, and applied sports science and sports medicine center to support the daily needs of football and 12 Olympic sports programs. The Simpson Center represented the physical manifestation of Cal High Performance, a concept Barbour developed at Berkeley, which represents a seamless integration of all factors impacting a student-athlete’s ability to success in the classroom and in their competitive venue. Prior to her tenure at Berkeley, Barbour was the deputy director of athletics at Notre Dame, serving as the university’s senior athletic administrator from July 2002 to September 2004. She previously held an associate athletic director position there starting in 2000. In 1996, Barbour was appointed Tulane’s director of athletics at age 36, and during her three years overseeing the program, Green Wave teams won 12 conference championships. In her first year in the position, the school captured four conference titles, a feat never before accomplished in Tulane history. She also hired Tommy Bowden as head football coach during her first year. Bowden proceeded in 1997 to post the Green Wave’s first winning season (74) in 16 years, and then directed the school to a 12-0 record, a Conference USA championship and a No. 7 national ranking the following season as the 1998 Liberty Bowl champions. Barbour was recruited to Tulane as an associate athletic director in 1991. Born in Annapolis, Md., Barbour grew up in a military family. Her father was a career aviator in the U.S. Navy, and her family lived in various U.S. locations as well as in Western Europe during her childhood. Barbour graduated cum laude in 1981 with a B.S. degree in physical education from Wake Forest University, where she was a four-year letterwinner and served as captain of the field hockey team. She also played two seasons of women’s basketball for the Demon Deacons. Barbour earned advanced degrees at the University of Massachusetts (an M.S. in sports management in 1983) and Northwestern’s Kellogg School of Management (an MBA in 1991). Barbour’s career in intercollegiate athletics began as a field hockey assistant coach and lacrosse administrative assistant at Massachusetts in 1981. Between master’s programs, Barbour served as assistant field hockey and lacrosse coach at Northwestern from 1982-84. She also held the position of director of recruiting services during that period, before being promoted to assistant athletic director for intercollegiate programs in 1984, a position she held until 1989. Prior to joining Tulane, Barbour worked in programming and production for FOX Sports Net in Chicago during the summer of 1990.
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