By Brittany Burke
It has been five months since Paul Shlickmann accepted his new position as athletics director for the CCSU Blue Devils, and within those five months he has already established a strong presence not only with the university community but the surrounding area as well.
“I think it’s really important to me and us as a department, us being a very viable component to campus life and an integrated component to campus life and being a very positive front porch for the university and I think we’ve accomplished some good things with working with faculty and staff and working with student affairs and engaging students and some of the things we did early on in the year and trying to market and engage our students,” said Schlickmann.
In taking on the role of AD in May, one of Schlickmann’s main goals for the athletics department was to get more of the CCSU campus involved and excited to be a Blue Devil. To ensure he really listens to what the students want he has gone to speak with SGA, and implemented “Go Blue Fridays” within the athletics department, which has already begun to spread beyond athletics.
“It just inspires people to be prideful and energetic about being a Blue Devil and having pride for your campus and your school it’s not so much about athletics it’s about having pride in the school and wanting to display that and having a part of it,” he said regarding the student participation he has seen during his first full season with CCSU.
Instilling that pride starts with the little things and evolves to the larger aspects. Walking in to Kaiser the first thing you see is the thirty different championship trophies pictures of the building’s namesake as well as that of the Detrick Gymnasium have also been hung so students can recognize and learn about their school’s history.
Another yet equally important piece that Schlickmann wanted to work on was reaching the people outside of the campus, including local businesses and alumni. However, one of the most important parts of the external piece isn’t necessarily luring people to the CCSU home games, to Schlickmann it’s about the athletics department doing good things such as volunteerism within the New Britain community.
Relationships have already started to grow between the CCSU athletics department and the New Britain Friendship Center, the New Britain Boys and Girls Club and the New Britain Hospital. It is Schlickmann’s objective to get the department staff and primarily the athletes out and volunteering, whether it is cooking and serving food in the Friendship Center or conducting sports clinics at the hospital and Boys and Girls club.
“We talked on the onset about the competitive piece and that’s the most visible piece of what we do but it’s not everything…helping them to get a great education and allowing them to grow and become contributing members of the community and learn the value of that selfless approach to community service and all the things that go along with that and continually talking about doing the right things and working hard and being respectful of others and all those kind of general concepts we all preach, I really believe in strongly so that’s the piece at this level of athletics and again the competitive piece and the scores appear in the paper are often the most visible but there’s other parts,” said Schlickmann.
“I think if you’re doing them correctly and believe in them as an educator which I do I think that contribute to the success piece and I truly believe they are intertwined.”
The competitive part is also a large factor in Schlickmann’s first season as AD, which produced a co-championship for the football team, a defending championship in men’s cross country and numerous other accomplishments from the Blue Devils, but this semester is only the beginning. Schlickmann is excited for what’s to come of the future of CCSU athletics, believing that they can truly do great things.