PRESS CONTACT:
Irene Borak
Director of Public Relations
10775 N. St. Helen Road
Roscommon, MI 48653
(989) 275-5000 ext. 242
ROSCOMMON – Kirtland’s women’s basketball coach Teresa Stuck was recently named to the position of athletic director for the college, replacing interim director Steve Oppy who resigned in October due to health issues. Stuck, 24, of Houghton Lake, will continue her duties as women’s basketball coach.
In Stuck’s first weeks in her new position, she has already made a move that she hopes will strengthen the college’s 5-year-old athletics program. She has issued an academic policy for Kirtland athletes that doesn’t just echo, but resonates with her philosophy of college sports.
“I recruit the person first, the student second and the athlete third,” said Stuck of the process she uses to choose athletes for her team. She fully recognizes that as a coach at a two-year college, her first priority has to be to produce students who will be accepted at four-year institutions. If they also continue on as athletes, so much the better.
Therefore, how well her athletes do academically this year should be a good indicator of her success as a recruiter – the policy provides all the tools necessary for her athletes to succeed, she said, if only they will take personal responsibility to make it happen.
“Our first priority here is academics,” Stuck explained. “The policy includes mandatory hours at the study table and mandatory progress reports from instructors that include attendance reports. If they don’t show up for class or to study, or don’t make adequate progress in their classes, they don’t play.”
The term “regardless of the situation” is liberally sprinkled amidst the conditions.
“We have to give them the environment to succeed here,” Stuck said, “but they have to make it happen.”
Stuck herself is the perfect role model for the success she hopes her athletes will attain. At 24, she is the second-year coach for the Lady Firebirds and is likely the youngest athletic director at any college in the state.
“My college coaches were always people to look up to,” Stuck said. “It was through my own college experience that I truly learned the importance of academics. I always wanted to just play, play, play – but I wouldn’t be where I am now if I hadn’t also done well academically.”
Keeping her athletes academically eligible to play and meeting their own potential is Stuck’s first priority and she’s happy with the start they’ve made.
“They’re good students,” Stuck said of her current crop of women athletes. “At this rate, we’ll be in the top 25 in the nation academically this year.” In fact, that top-25 mark is the goal statement attached to the new academic policy that applies to both the men’s and women’s teams.
Some hurdles to the program Stuck now oversees do exist, however. Namely the program’s status within the Michigan Community College Athletic Association. This summer the governing association ruled that Kirtland’s athletic program will be on probationary status this season. This means the Firebirds may participate in MCCAA contests during the regular season, but not during the post season, and season results will not be counted in the conference standings.
The probation was instated because two of the college’s teams, namely its golf and cross country teams, did not participate in the minimum number of competitions during their 2004-2005 seasons, as outlined by the association. Stuck said the athletes and coaches have been working hard to make sure the probation is lifted.
Fans need not wait long to see Stuck, as well as Kirtland’s head men’s basketball coach Glen Donahue, who is back after recovering from quadruple heart bypass surgery, on the bench and in action. The Firebirds open their home season Tuesday, Nov. 22, when they host Lansing Community College at the CRAF Center in Roscommon.. The women tip off at 5:30 p.m. while the men’s game begins at 7:30 p.m. Admission is free.