November 9, 2010

Kent State's Nielsen shares HOF Luncheon Club with veterans

By Jim Thomas, Canton Repository

 

CANTON TWP. —Monday’s Hall of Fame Luncheon Club meeting — with Kent State University Athletics Director Joel Nielsen as the featured speaker — was not a typical affair.

It featured an invocation of considerable length and depth and the Lord’s Prayer, not a club staple but one recited as loudly as the Pledge of Allegiance at Tozzi’s on 12th.

Guest speaker Alison Heppe — Perry High School’s softball coach — gave a detailed but humorous blow by blow of her team’s run to the Division I state softball championship last spring as the club saluted her Panthers.

President Jeff Thornberry then asked for all of the luncheon club’s members who were present to stand, by war, in honor of Veterans Day on Thursday.

Thornberry had earlier said the group’s membership ranks consisted of more than 75 percent military veterans, and they did not disappoint as each group stood to applause.

If you’ve read this far, then you might feel a little like Kent State’s Nielsen, who patiently waited his turn at the dais.

Barely six months on his new job and in his first appearance at the club, Nielsen was lively and sharp.

“You’ve got quite a promoter here as a coach,” Nielsen said of Heppe, “which is good to see. I liked her idea for selling tickets and T-shirts.

“I liked the club’s idea of thanking the veterans. That was a very nice thing that you’ve done here. My dad was in Korea, in the Army.”

Nielsen later got the opportunity to segue into Army, the collegiate institution. The Golden Flashes are hosting Army on Saturday in what is billed as Heroes Day at Dix Stadium to contribute to the Veterans Day celebration. “We’re expecting 800 from Army to join in pregame tailgate activities,” said Nielsen.

Attendance and numbers were two key segments of Nielsen’s talk. He said the football team had not met the NCAA-required 15,000 average tickets sold for football, “and that puts us in danger of retaining our Division I standing,” he said. “But this year we have already sold 75,000 with two games left, so we should” hit that requirement.

When it came to grades and grade-point averages, Kent is in solid standing. “We have 425 student-athletes on scholarship, in 18 sports,” he said. “Their GPA is 3.0 ... that’s excellent. It’s greater than that of the general student body.”

Nielsen said that Kent State’s athletic department “is like the front porch of the institution,” the welcoming area for all to see. He talked about how crucial television exposure — “Really, it is a 3 1/2 hour promotion” — is to the school’s budget, and that the Flashes have seven ESPN basketball games already booked for the season, after two televised football games.

“Admissions rely on sports for that exposure,” he said. His example of sports and television was Butler University, last year’s NCAA Division I men’s basketball runner-up.

“Butler went up 67 percent, because of that,” said Nielsen. “Sports are a rallying point ... how many other departments have a Homecoming?”