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Kevin Dickie says the tough decisions that were made in paring the varsity athletics program from 14 to eight teams are in line with the University of New Brunswick's goals to become known as a program of national stature.

UNB’S KEVIN DICKIE

"To become excellent, to meet our mission and to pay the bills of the day is not sustainable, (with 14 programs)," said the beleagured athletic director who has been taking the brunt of the criticism for the realignment of six programs from the school's varsity program into the competitive club system.

Dickie's interpretation of the changes, which involve the men's and women's wrestling programs; the men's swim team, the men's and women's cross country teams and the women's hockey program, is that two programs (cross country and wrestling) are affected minimally, one (men's and women's swimming) affected positively and one (women's hockey) affected drastically."

Dickie said the women's hockey program was the most expensive varsity sport on campus.

"It cost us over $110,000 to run women's hockey last year," he said. That doesn't include money for scholarships or hiring a full time coach, which Dickie estimates it would cost to make the program competitive with their Atlantic University Sport Women's Conference competition.

He said other AUS programs spend up to $70,000 on scholarships and are supplementing their competitive schedules against American competition.

"Do the math, and tell me what we would need to invest in order to get us into the competition."

And Dickie made it clear that the mandate of the university is to not just "get into" the competition, but to win.

He called the school's athletics program "a high performance environment. I've never, as a coach, even talked about winning," he said. "I've talked about performance. And if your performance meets the variables around you that give you a chance to have success, you should win.

"We haven't necessarily distributed the variables in the right place. We can redistribute what we have into programs that need it. We're not shortchanged," he said. "The university treats us extremely well. We're just trying to spread the money too thin."

The "reinvestment" of resources into the eight programs which remain is an effort to fix that.

He said the splitting of the men's and women's swim teams will allow the women access to funds under the varsity budget. The men's team will be required to raise scholarship monies as the men's hockey, men's volleyball and men's soccer programs have.

"Their success is in direct correlation to the scholarships they give," he said. "The scholarships they give are in direct correlation to their fund raising efforts as a team."

Dickie agrees with women's hockey coach Don Davis' philosophical approach to the role of the faculty of kinesiology.

"I think the university always has to have a role in terms of leadership," he said. "But not when it costs you $110,000 and when it would cost you that much more to do it right."

Dickie said the former varsity programs drain human as well as financial resources. Subtraction of varsity status will allow staff to devote more to varsity sports in such areas as community outreach, budget management, sports information and website communications, eligibility, travel, marketing, development fund raising and running day-to-day and specialty events.

Dickie refers to the University of British Columbia Thunderbirds, who have taken championship banners home from the last two national championship events at the Aitken Centre.

"Why can't that be my vision with the Varsity Reds?" he said.

He believes they're on the right track. On his system of "power ranking" of schools within the AUS, a personal scoring system which grades each school on several criteria, UNB improved from sixth in the 11-team Conference the year before to second only to the Cape Breton University Capers last year. It's all part of the plan to "helping us become a national institution," he said.

He said the mission of the varsity program is "to be excellent in athletics, excellent in academics and excellent in the community...excellence being defined as the best that we can be."

He said university president Dr. John McLaughlin shares that vision, pointing to the establishment of a $50,000 "championship fund" ; a "matching" program in which the university will match donor donations to establish scholarships to the tune of $250,000 over three years; and the establishment of 13 "Residence Life" scholarships over the past two years.

"But what they're saying "We need a return on our investment, based on the mission, the vision and the values of our university."

Athletically, that means UNB has to "get to the next level, and we need to be front and centre," said Dickie. "We need to be a place of destination for kids across the country. We need to be a place where kids want to be for varsity athletics."

Dickie bought into that vision when he was hired as athletic director three years ago. It was the vision he brought to his job interview.

"That was the whole premise of my interview, the whole premise of my presentation and the premise of me ensuring before I signed on the dotted line that the opportunity would be there for us to be the best we could be." he said. "It was based on the premise of Dr. McLaughlin's vision for the university, which I very much subscribe to. If that wasn't the premise, I'm not the athletic director here. There's never been a day when I have strived to be a part of anything other than the best I and we can be. Fortunately, I walked into an environment that was going to allow that to happen."

Over the long term, Dickie believes it will be the right step.

"My whole life has been about trying to do the right thing," he said.

"I wake up every day trying to make a positive difference. And I really believe this will be a part of that. Unfortunately, for the short term, it's certainly had a negative impact on some people. There hasn't been an e-mail or a phone call or a message on my answering machine that I haven't answered. There's a saying that goes something like 'Don't judge a person by what they do, judge a person by what they do with what they have.' That's been a foundation of everything that has transpired here since last week."