Meet Interim AD Porterfield Sat Aug 1st

[tgo]

At the GU Alumni Club of Orange County's annual Beach BBQ and Student Send-Off.

The event is this saturday from 11a to 3p and will be the last event held at the McDonough family home. Bob Mcdonough (namesake of the business school) passed away over a year ago but his widow continues to offer her home for our annual event. She has, however, placed the house on the market so this will be our last event at this beautiful location.

Dr. Porterfield, our Interim Athletic Director, will be our guest speaker.

All incoming students from the area are invited along with their families as a way to welcome them to the Hoya family. Our local club also gives out our annual scholarship at this event.

If you want to come let me know and i can add you to the evite for more details.

If you dont live in the area but have any questions you would like to ask of Dr. Porterfield let me know and i will try to get you an answer.

[tgo]

Dr. Porterfield is a great guy to talk to and not surprisingly has a wealth of information and experience to relay on just about anything related to GU. I unfortunately missed his formal remarks as well as Q & A to the group since I had to go to my car to get a change of clothes for my kids after they lost a game of chicken with the ocean at the shoreline but i wanted to comment for those who might be interested about anything i learned from our interim AD.

His knowledge of the department, the issues it faces and what can and should be done about them was easy to see.

He said that he focuses on the "interim" part of his title and when asked if he considered the full time job he said "for about 20 seconds" but that while he has the passion for and interest in athletics as well as the skills to manage the department, the job requires someone who has some skills/experience that he does not feel he possesses, mainly he thinks a good AD is a coach of coaches and the ability to do that is not something you can learn on the job.

He is working on moving the MSF forward but he had not had the ability yet to get some of the costs and numbers he needs to make the pitch he is planning on making so relaying anything he said on the topic would be speculative and not appropriate for a public message board.

A practice facility is of course a huge priority for athletics and he assured me that it is for the university as a whole and as current projects like the science center are completed it moves up the list to become the top priority.

He told some interesting stories about coaches and also about how frustrating the disorganization of the Kenner league is for athletics but their hands are tied there. He had a lot of praise for Muir who did a lot to move GU forward in particular with compliance reporting to the NCAA among other things.

i felt like i could have talked with him for hours, we had a lengthly discussion about the affects of closing the pub back in my day on campus and drinking issues at GU as well.

He went on and on about the homecoming event with ZO, i cant wait to watch that on my tivo when i get home tonight. He also said he plans to come back to So-Cal for the wooden classic game in December. If anything else comes to mind that he talked about i will add it, there werent many regular posters at the event but he did head up to San Fran for a similar event the next day so perhaps some of those guys can add to my notes.

[DanMcQ]

Thanks tgo. That is all good to hear.

[SFHoya99]

Thanks, tgo.

Unfortunately, I think most of the SF folks who post here couldn't make it. I will ask the folks that were there but they are not so athletic focused.