By Brittany Burke
One year, three NEC Championships, one new mascot, 11 updated marks, and multiple new initiatives are just some of the things Athletics Director Paul Schlickmann and his department staff managed to accomplish during his first year at the helm, but now that the groundwork has been laid, he is poised to begin year two.
“I think for me, and we just had our opening staff meeting today, we talked about our opening goals for the year, and what I said in part was, that everything we did last year was about trying to assess and identify who we are and then take the next step and finding some clarity on who and where we want to be, then building the base or the infrastructure to put us in a position to be able to be successful,” said Schlickmann. “So that’s generally speaking was what we tried accomplish throughout the year and I think we’ve taken some great steps to do that.”
Establishing a base included the student athletes and athletic department as well as CCSU community and its surrounding areas. This included prominent things such as making sure the athletes are successful in the classroom and on the field, the logo rebranding, continual renovations of the sports complex and community integration.
It is key for Schlickmann to have his athletes and coaches give back to community and last year he made sure to help the program find its niche while forming working relationships that will bring even more of the surrounding area on to the CCSU campus.
“Our core community engagement initiatives are certainly not the only ones, but the ones in the community are New Britain Boys and Girls Club, the Friendship Center, [and] the Hospital for Special Care … we have an operating principal on community engagement which is very important to what we’re doing,” said Schlickmann. “It’s also a core value and part of the strategic plan for the University we have an obligation to do our part and even without that it’s important for our athletes to get engaged.”
While Schlickmann assured that the athletes and coaches were making progress outside of CCSU he was also ensuring that the advancement of the new sports complex. Throughout the summer, construction has been done to create the Arute Field restrooms and team locker rooms, which will be joined by bleachers this fall. Once the Arute Field project is complete, construction of the new soccer field and track will be in full swing.
Schlickmann doesn’t see the new renovations as something just for the athletes. A new complex is just another way to make everyone at CCSU proud to be a Blue Devil while remaining a top Division I school.
“I think it’s a great recruiting tool for prospective student athletes and general students and it gives our student athletes state of the art facilities to train and compete and that’s really important,” said Schlickmann. “Particularly at a Division I level. Every Division I school is trying to do the same thing. Everyone is trying to either get ahead of or keep up with the Jones’ in terms of high quality state of the art facilities, so we’re going to have a beautiful outdoor complex when it’s all said and done.”
Despite all the advancements it is essential for Schlickmann that he stick to the department’s 11 operating principles. Community engagement was one, but the two most important according to Schlickmann are the academic success principles, which involves keeping the cumulative GPA of all student athletes at 3.0 as well as the athletic success principle.
Each operating principle involves separate goals. In the athletic success principle, it is the goal not only to have winning seasons, but to also break the top four in the race for the Commissioner’s Cup. CCSU was ranked fifth last year, moving up from sixth, but the school has yet to ever reach the top four.
All of these operating principles are designed to make CCSU the premier program in the Northeast Conference.
“I want, when other people talk about our program, when my colleagues, other coaches in the league, when our alums, our donors and people in the community, everybody we compete against, when they talk about Central Connecticut athletics, [I want them to] say, ‘Gosh dang it, they’re doing something right over there, they compete hard, their athletes are successful, they get after it, they’re good sportsmen, everyone connected with that program is classy, it does well, I hate competing against them because they’re tough, but I respect the heck out of them,’ I want to be viewed as a model of how to do things the right way because if you do that then that will translate into athletic success and academic success,” said Schlickmann.
The new year is going to be filled with the unexpected, which is what Schlickmann has come to expect, but for now he has base goals, which not only include the athletics department and student athletes, but the entire CCSU nation.
