Dear Tiger Nation,

I want to take this opportunity to thank you for your support over the last six months since I arrived at Towson University. Transition presents a plethora of opportunities and I can report that Towson Athletics is trending in a very positive direction as we head into the summer months.

On Monday night, our student-athletes, coaches and some very special guests will come together for our annual Athletics Banquet. Be sure and check TowsonTigers.com for a full recap following the event.

Some of the highlights of the 2010-11 academic year include ...

• Meredith Budner's outstanding performances in the pool at the 2011 NCAA Women's Swimming and Diving Championships and our women's No. 21 team finish; 

• Our women's tennis team winning a school-record 14 matches this season - up from four a year ago. A great job to Coach Doug Neagle!;

• Our gymnastics program went 18-1 during the regular season and undefeated at the Towson Center;

• After a tough start to the season, our women's lacrosse team ran through the Colonial Athletic Association and captured the school's first-ever CAA regular season championship;

• Tiger Baseball has had a strong spring and is in the hunt for the postseason with two weeks to go; and 

• Our softball program made it back to the CAA Tournament this year and has a strong young nucleus returning for 2012.

I look forward to seeing this list of team accomplishments grow in the seasons to come. Each of our teams' goal is to WIN WITH CHARACTER. There is no getting past the fact that many of our teams have had a very challenging year, and with that must come a renewed focus on what makes a champion. Each team has specific goals and objectives laid out for them this offseason and I am confident that everyone associated with Towson Athletics will be working harder, smarter, and more together than ever before.

Along with the aforementioned team success has also come great accomplishments from a group of our head coaches who have been singled out by their peers as the best of their leagues. Coach Pat Mead was again named CAA Women's Swimming Coach of the Year, first-year Tiger head gymnastics coach Vicki Chliszczyk was named the ECAC Coach of the Year and Sonia LaMonica of Towson women's lacrosse was most recently showcased as the CAA Coach of the Year following her first season on the Tigers' sideline. A great job by all - you set the bar high for your Towson peers. 

All of these coaches have displayed a clear vision for team success and are undeterred. Everyone at every school has challenges - nowhere is perfect. These staffs have had a great year improvising, overcoming and adapting.  Bravo to Pat, Vicki and Sonia - way to lead!

We have also welcomed some new faces to the Tiger coaching ranks with each new hire bringing a high level of energy, focus, and attitude to their respective programs.

In early 2011, Kate Stepanek was named the first-ever head coach of our women's golf team while Brian Yaniger was named Towson's Director of Golf and head men's coach. This tandem is highly charged to bring great results to our golf programs.

Pat Skerry is the new head men's basketball coach and he has assembled a first-rate staff with Associate Head Coach Kevin Clark, and assistants Kenny Johnson, Luke Murray and Director of Basketball Operations Duane Simpkins. Mike Sweats will also be serving as the video coordinator for Tiger Basketball in 2011-12 and will officially join the staff later this summer. Our team will be staying on campus all summer to work out and get to know each other in a very different dynamic. I want to personally thank strength coach Jeremy Pick for his outstanding efforts in working with our basketball guys over the past two months. He has played an important part in changing the culture around this team, and that has been critical.

As you all are aware, we are currently in the process of selecting our new head men's lacrosse coach. I am truly excited about the potential of Towson Lacrosse and what the future brings. Our search committee will be meeting early this week to review our candidate profile and a very strong list of coaches who want the opportunity to be next in the line behind Tiger coaches Carl Runk and Tony Seaman. Towson Lacrosse has a great tradition and our expectations for the program are championship motivated - on and off the field. I want to thank the folks who will be assisting me in this process, namely Greg LaCour '82 and Senior Associate Director of Athletics Mike Harris, who will be co-chairing this committee. Our goal is to have a new coach in place as soon as possible so we can get busy working towards winning the 2012 CAA Championship.

Our support staff is also going through a period of change as we have welcomed in some outstanding young professionals to our ranks in the last 60 days.

Towson graduate Mike Hollis is our new Assistant Director of Athletics for Fan Development. He returns to campus after a very successful sales career with Madison Square Garden and the New York Knicks, Rangers, and Liberty. Michael will lead our inside sales team with group tickets and event staging as we strive to make every Towson Athletics event a memorable experience.

Damon Lewis is our new Director of New Media, coming to us from Indianapolis, Ind., where he worked with the Horizon League and most recently a local TV affiliate covering the Butler University basketball program. Damon has a strong skill set in video production that will be put to great use as Towson Athletics launches a series of new web sites on August 1, 2011. The world-wide web is a critical communications link for our program and Damon's talents will help tell the story of Towson Athletics like never before.

Perhaps the most important area of our department's present and future operations in with the Tiger Club, which has undergone a complete reformation.  

Not only have we gone back to the name TIGER CLUB (formerly the Tiger Athletic Fund), we have also structured this part of our operation to succeed and properly serve our stakeholders. Our new Director of Operations is Lindsay Peck, who was most recently on the staff with the Mountaineer Athletic Club at West Virginia University. Lindsay will be managing our new Priority Points program, which will be unveiled here at TowsonTigers.com over Memorial Day Weekend.

Tiger Hall of Famer Dan Crowley is managing the new T-CLUB, which will network and integrate former student-athletes and coaches back into the fold of Tiger Athletics while former TU lacrosse standout Greg LaCour is leading the charge on the major gifts front.  

Our men's lacrosse team will soon be moving into a new locker room, which is due in large part to the combined fundraising efforts of Coach Seaman and Greg. Tying all of this together is former Tiger swimmer John Latteri, who is our Assistant Director of Athletics for Development. John is responsible for our annual fund, and is in constant contact with Towson's Campus Development Office as we all work TOGETHER to maximize our donor opportunities and communications.

Simply put, our athletics program will not move forward until we are able to increase the private financial support with Tiger Club, our sport-specific giving programs and major gift projects. We are currently at the bottom of the CAA in terms of private support. Over my brief tenure here, I have heard a lot of reasons why we have not raised more dollars to support our student-athletes. To me, that is in the past. There are way too many reasons why people SHOULD INVEST IN TIGER ATHLETICS. Everything about our operation is on the rise and over the summer, I look forward to sharing our CHAMPIONSHIP VISION with you. We will issue our first-ever Towson Athletics Annual Report in October, which will outline all of our budget and business realities from FY11, show our position among our peers in the CAA, and will outline where we are headed in FY12 as we plan on being in a must better place competitively in the CAA.

For this to become a reality, we need YOU to INVEST in our potential so that our shared dreams of CHAMPIONSHIPS are realized. To compete to WIN in the CAA, we need funds to make the student-athletes experience better, including housing and better nutrition. We need to provide better salaries for our head coaches and assistants so we can create continuity from year to year. The coaches also need better travel accommodations and increased recruiting budgets to help make us more competitive in the difficult world of recruiting. 

Our funding from the State and through fees covers our base needs, but to make a change, we need the external revenue streams from Tiger Club, corporate sponsorship from Towson Sports Properties, and ticket sales to be on the rise, annually.  We are now set up to be able to attack with these areas like never before.

Be sure to mark your calendars for the Fifth Annual Joe Vitt Crab Feast which will be held on Saturday, June 25, at Micky Fins Bar and Grill in Ocean City, Maryland from 6 p.m. to 9 p.m. Individual tickets for the Crab Feast are $65 per person, $600 for groups of 10, and children 12 & under are free. There will also be a golf outing at the Crab Feast where participants will meet the coaches earlier in the day at the Bay Club Golf Course in Berlin, Md., for an 8:30 a.m. shotgun start.  Registration for the golf outing is $100 per person and each foursome will play with a coach. All Tiger Fans are welcome to attend and should contact Dan Crowley (dcrowley@towson.edu or 410-704-3284) to RSVP.

Finally, please be sure and save the date for The 2011 Hall of Fame Black and Gold Invitational on Monday, July 25, at Greystone Golf Course in White Hall, Md. The event begins at 9 a.m. with a shotgun start. Hall of Fame members may play for $125 per person, while non-Hall of Fame members are $250 per person. Registration fee includes green fees, golf carts, driving range use, pre-tournament breakfast, lunch, an awards program following round and an Under Armour gift bag. All Tiger fans are welcome and registration will be available on TowsonTigers.com starting June 1, 2011.

With Black and Gold Pride,

Mike Waddell
Director of Athletics