Intramural sports, a glittery, newfangled spirits squad, and a completely reimagined athletic website. These are but a few of the things COD students can expect with recently hired Athletic Director Greg McVey captaining the helm of the department. A family man at heart, a former champion, and a successful administrator with a burning passion for commitment to higher education, McVey has stepped into his leadership position with conviction and capability.

Following the departure of prior Athletic Director Paul Zakowski, COD formed a committee to interview and select a sufficient replacement. The committee discovered Greg McVey with over 25 years of athletic administration experience working at Jefferson College in Hillsboro, Missouri. Talking about his successes at Jefferson College McVey detailed a winning record and the ongoing success of his student-athletes.

“We won almost 70 percent of our games there,” McVey said. “In all of our sports we matriculate probably about 85-90 percent of our student-athletes onto four-year institutions. Some even go pro. Our grade point averages were higher on average every year. Our community involvement was higher every year, especially with Special Olympics and doing special events in the community. All of those things put together I think we had a very successful three-year period at that college.”

Upon receiving the offer from COD, McVey felt it was the kind one does not simply pass up.

Now taking up the reigns once more at yet another institution, McVey intends to apply his vision to COD and progress it through its next stage in evolution.

“It’s my job to make sure to provide the best experience I can for our student-athletes in competition, class, and community,” McVey said. “If we do that, I think we’re doing our jobs. Everything we do is to provide a positive experience for them to grow and develop through their participation in sport within those three areas, and that’s what we’re gonna do.”

McVey plans to achieve this through expert utilization of resources, staff and the institution available at COD. Every institution brings with it its own territory. Unforeseen trials and tribulations are inevitable, however, as are the prospective assets that will be available to conquer those challenges. McVey remains undaunted.

“I think there’s a lot to do, and I think that I’m someone who enjoys a challenge,” he said. “I feel like we have things here in place to do this, but I’m going to need help. We’re all in this together. We’re all trying to make these things work. So it’s a matter of having a team effort going forward. I think in the past maybe that hasn’t been the case, but I can tell you now that we’re all on board together, and we’re trying to determine the best way to move forward.”

When asked about what makes COD unique and the assets that are available for him here, McVey cited how, “this is a place where the sky’s the limit. I think we have unbelievable facilities, tremendous staff in all departments and a very large student body very engaged in trying to develop and go on to their careers in life. A lot of great things can happen.”

One such stride towards greatness resides within the intramurals set in motion for the current academic year. One of McVey’s highest priorities is increased student involvement in on-campus activities and athletics. The formation of intramural activities is an effort to attain that objective.

“There are 30,000 students that go here. Not all of them have the skills or the time to compete at the intercollegiate level,” McVey said. “So we’re trying to increase engagement for all the students, not just student-athletes. We want all of our students to be involved outside the classroom. Great way to do that is a recreation program and trying to develop programming students want. So we’ve started throwing ideas out there and started some leagues based on feedback people have given us in the past here. We’ve launched ultimate frisbee and basketball and other sorts of things, but we also want students to tell us what other sort of activities they think would go well here. What activities they want to engage in while at COD, that’s going to evolve over time. It’s just a great way to engage other students on campus.”

McVey has found success with this specific tactic in the past during his time as the head baseball coach and campus recreation director of Kentucky Wesleyan College in 2001.

McVey has additional plans to improve the communication about the athletic events on campus to students through the creation of an updated website designed to connect more of the community together.

“Our new athletic website is extremely important,” he said. “we’re almost to the point where we’re ready to get that out and launched. We’re still doing some things behind the scenes to make sure we have everything in there before we launch it. It’s through Sidearm Sports. They created the template for us, and so we got the template, and now it’s about content, putting in schedules, rosters, and feature stories and all those sorts of things. So we’re in the process of doing those things before we send that out to the world. I think that’s going to be a huge upgrade from what we got. What we’ve got now is fine, but it’s just not at the level that we play at. We’ve stepped that up quite a bit with COD athletics on social media, and that’s somewhere we’re trying to do more. We use it as a positive way to promote things, and that’s what we’re going to try to continue to do moving forward.”

For those wondering about the nature of McVey on an interpersonal level, look no further than what he describes as his greatest strength.

“I think I’m a good listener,” he said. “I think everyone has opinions, goals and ideas, and you have to at some point listen to folks and hear what it is they’re really saying. I think there are so many folks that are out there that listen to respond instead of trying to listen to understand, and I think I try to make it a point to do that. To try to listen, to try to understand folks, and see where they’re at with things, and take their experiences, and try to figure out the best way to move forward. I think that’s one of them. I think that I’m someone that will work his tail off until the job is done, and I wanna do it in a professional, mature way and, hopefully, we are an asset to the college.”

He attributes much of his ability to coordinate the diverse resources and individuals in his working environment to this quality since it allows him to attain a comprehensive understanding of the tools he is operating with.

“I think there’s a lot that is going to fall upon me,” McVey said. “Me being visible around campus, being on committees, talking with folks, doing the things that I need to do to spread the word of all the great things we got going on down here. Then I think crowds will come. We gotta figure out ways to make that happen, and so, whatever that is in terms of promotions and in terms of drawing folks back that’s what we’re going to do. Again, it’s going to evolve over time.”