Earlier this year I had the pleasure of receiving the NCAA President’s Gerald R. Ford Award.  This award recognizes an individual who has provided significant leadership as an advocate for intercollegiate athletics on a continuous basis over the course of his or her career.  It was truly a special day for me.  The only thing missing was Myles Brand, President of the NCAA, and the man who selected me for this honor, was unable to attend the event.  

Just prior to the start of the annual NCAA convention President Brand was diagnosed with pancreatic cancer and his treatment program prevented him from attending the event in Washington, D.C.  After the annual convention in January, I asked Wally Renfro, Joni Comstock and our friends at the NCAA to take the medal back to Indianapolis and we would find a time for President Brand to present it to me when his health improved.

Last week, accompanied by my friend and colleague Diane Stone (an NCAA champion herself – she won the 1987 women’s doubles with Katrina Adams while at Northwestern) we connected in his office in Indianapolis and it was great to catch up with President Brand and learn of his vision for the NCAA.

He is focused on continuing to increase the number of student athletes who graduate from our colleges and universities, and he is developing plans to make athletic departments across the nation more fiscally responsible and helping them put their money where it will do the most good for student athletes.

Among other topics, we also touched on collegiate tennis and I had a chance to share with him my vision of how the World TeamTennis format can benefit the collegiate programs.  We talked of how we are already using the WTT format in a successful program with our annual Campus Championships tournament.  Even though this program is for club tennis and not managed by the NCAA, it is a great example of how the WTT format can work in college tennis.  We talked of the benefits the WTT format brings collegiate tennis -- both from a student athlete perspective and from a financial position – and how this could be easily implemented in any program.   

Additionally, President Brand expressed a concern in the high number of older foreign student athletes (many of whom are already competing at the professional level) competing in tennis that might either be taking spots from American players and/or coming over here to gain playing experience and not completing their educational pursuit.  He is watching this issue closely.

This was my first meeting with President Brand and it was a joy to get to finally get to meet him.  I left Indianapolis with a much better understanding of him and the organization.  He and his team are working hard to improve the relationship between student athletes and academia and that is no easy task.  This will be his legacy and I plan to support him any way I can.