Athletic department disappointed; seeks to right ship
Jeff Moses
“Disappointed,” Interim Athletic Director John Mulhem said when asked how he felt about the overall state of Mesa Community College fall athletics. Who could blame him for his sentiments?
The football team is sitting at a dismal 1-8 in its first year with head coach Denver Latimore, who pre-season predicted his team to be undefeated national champions.
Both men’s and women’s soccer are sub-500 and not ‘competitive in every game’ as coach Andrew Guarneri expected. Possibly the worst of the fall sports, women’s volleyball ended with an embarrassing 2-21 record for the 2010 season.
With both football coach Latimore and volleyball coach Martindale in their first seasons as the head coach of their respective sports, as well as Athletic Director Mulhem who has been back with MCC for just over six months, hopes were high.
In his first tenure with MCC as both Associate Athletic Director and Athletic Director, women’s soccer made the National Championship three out of four years, the football team went 9-2 and won the Valley of the Sun Bowl and the Athletic Department took first, second and third place in a five-year span for best junior college athletic program in the country.
When asked if the woes of the 2010 Thunderbird fall athletic season could be blamed on the previous regime, Mulhem said “their vision was a little off.”
“I have to assess the whole department,” Mulhem said in regards to possible coaching changes, “the job of the head coach is to run quality programs. (I am) disappointed with the programs, knowing where they once were.”
It’s not all gloomy in the fall, however.
Both the men’s and women’s cross country teams find themselves nationally ranked – a tremendous team achievement in an individual sport.
There is a plan to right the ship. Mulhem, if kept on permanently, plans to bolster the Thunderbird’s athletic programs through bolstering pride in MCC.
“When you come into our area, you’ll know you’re in Thunderbird country,” Mulhem said.
His plans include remodeling the lobby of the Theo Heap Gym into a Mesa Athletic ‘hall of fame,’ remodeling many of the teams’ facilities, building a Mesa Athletic sports complex to house all the coaches’ offices to encourage more inter-sport unity and create a coaching think tank to encourage the sharing of ideas.
“Athletics need more scholarship money and needs to recruits all the quality student athletes in the area,” Mulhem said, “the administration is fully behind everything we’re doing, but it does take time and it won’t happen overnight.”
For the future of athletics he offers these words, “just know we have bigger plans, and bigger dreams.
