Staff Monthly February Newsletter

February 2018 Upcoming Drop-In Lunch with Christyn Abaray, Director of Athletics *This is an open house style informal event so come by with your lunch and stay a while, or stop in for a few minutes of Q&A

Wed March 14th 12-1pm Warch Campus Center

Staff Recognition 

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A big thank you for Grounds and Campus services staff for putting in extra time and effort during the winter snow fall, much appreciated!

Thank you to Ryan Gebler for sharing his expertize in excel during our January Learning at Lawrence event, such great reviews from all attendees!

Lawrence University

Staff Monthly Athletics Update from Christyn Abaray The renewal of athletics at Lawrence University – where Lawrentians and Vikings meet!

Lawrence University Athletics represents between 20-25% of the student body, 13 head coaches, over 25 other coaches, 2.5 athletic trainers, the sports information director, the athletic performance coach, the administrative coordinator, and the athletics director. While the majority of our physical plant is located off of East South River Street, 4 of our sports practice and compete (and an additional 2 primarily practice) in the Buchanan Kiewit Wellness Center, and 2 of our sports practice and compete at the recently renovated Lawrence University tennis courts. We have 21 varsity athletics programs competing in 3 athletics conferences – Midwest Conference, Northern Collegiate Hockey Conference, and Midwest Fencing Conference.

We in athletics make our decisions through the lens of the overall goal of Lawrence University - assisting in the holistic development of the future leaders of the world. As imagined, we are one of the entities on campus that lives in multiple realms of the University – athletics, academics, admissions, student life, alumni/development, and physical plant realms. Collaboration with different entities across campus helps us build bridges to inevitably help our students.

To name a few exciting points – Coach Steve Francour has been named the Midwest Conference Men’s Tennis Coach of the Year for the past two consecutive years. Coach Michael Hall was named the 2016-17 Midwest Fencing Conference Congrats to Marilyn McGlone from Facility Services for submitting the winning photo this month!

Please submit future submissions to staff_connection@ lawrence.edu by the 30th of each month.

Men’s and Women’s Fencing Coach of the Year, Volleyball made the Midwest Conference post-season tournament in 2016 for the first time since the conference transitioned to needing to qualify to make the tournament, Men’s and Women’s Cross Country and Track & Field have had multiple records broken at the institutional level and have won multiple Midwest Conference Championships events over the past two years, and Men’s and Women’s Swimming and Diving finished in the top 3 at our Midwest Conference Championships last year.

Athletics includes educating the scholar-athletes, using sport as our vehicle and our playing surface as our classroom, teaches the tangible and intangible skills that enhance their education – effective communication, ability to follow direction, leading, working in groups, supporting others, time management, just to name a few. These skill sets add to a student’s “tool kit of skills” and become transferable into whatever arena the students may find themselves. Every year we have at least a third of our scholar-athlete population make the Midwest Conference or Northern Collegiate Hockey Conference all-academic teams. In addition we annually have several who are nominated to and make, based on their academic success, the academic All-America team in their sport. To highlight how incredible our students are, a trio of Lawrence University hockey players won “The Pitch” and pocketed a $10,000 first prize. The competition, which took part at Neuroscience Group Field at Fox Cities Stadium in front of a crowd of more than 100, is done in a similar way to the ABC television show Shark Tank. The competition is a collaboration between Lawrence, St. Norbert College, UWOshkosh and UW-Green Bay, and the program's goal is to fund start-up ideas of two teams or individual students. They won the competition with their software application called Tracr, which automates parts of forensic asset analysis. In addition to the cash prize, the Lawrence team receives $15,000 for technical services like web design and legal fees.

In March 2018, we will hold the first ever crowdfund for Lawrence Vikings Athletics in collaboration with our alumni and development colleagues and our communications colleagues. The momentum for the support of Vikings Athletics continues to grow, thanks to our students and coaches doing the hard work. Events like this crowdfund will keep us moving forward with our message – the renewal.

During the first week of April, we celebrate NCAA Division III week with educational sessions on Division III, athletics civic engagement events, and most importantly an enthusiastic THANK YOU to our scholarathletes.

In May 2018, we will co-host with University of Wisconsin – Oshkosh for a final time the NCAA DIII Baseball College World Series, which is a week-long endeavor planned many months in advance. This has brought much positive publicity to the Fox Valley over the years.

In June 2018 at Reunion we will host the first large-scale Athletics affinity function so all of those returning for Reunion who participated and/or enjoyed athletics here at Lawrence can come together and celebrate what athletics meant and continues to mean to all of us.

For those who would like a tour of our athletics facilities all across campus, please do not hesitate to reach out.

We welcome giving tours – x6760. Also, admissions to all of our events are free for Lawrence University employees with an ID. Christyn Abaray Director of Athletics Lawrence University