New Penn State Athletic Director Patrick Kraft’s Biggest Key to Success: His PSU Head Coaches

One of the first things Patrick Kraft did after he was officially hired as Penn State’s new athletic director on Friday morning was to meet with Penn State’s head coaches.

Smart man. That group of 24 is Kraft’s direct pipeline to more than 800 Penn State students who play 31 varsity sports.

Shortly after meeting with the head coaches, Kraft – who starts full-time on July 1 – met with the media. Early in his opening statement, he publicly laid down the gauntlet.

“We are 31 strong,” Kraft enthused. “Hear me again: We are 31 strong. And we are committed to winning national championships, conference championships. We will continue the tradition of winning.”

Of those two dozen head coaches, five have won a national championship at Penn State: Cael Sanderson (wrestling), Randy Jepson (men’s gymnastics), Erica Dambach (women’s soccer), Mark Pavlik (men’s volleyball) and Wes Glon (fencing). Sanderson, who came to Penn State in 2009, has won a remarkable nine national titles, including one six weeks ago, while Jepson has won three. The others have won one each.

And 10 of the current Penn State head coaches have won at least one Big Ten Conference title, be it a regular season and/or a conference tournament.

Many of those head coaches are accustomed to change. In total, they have been hired by four different predecessors to Kraft: four by the late Jim Tarman, seven by Tim Curley, four by Dave Joyner and eight by Sandy Barbour, who has been Penn State’s athletic director since August 2014 and who will retire on June 30, 2022.

For four Penn State head coaches, Kraft will be their fifth AD at University Park. Char Morett-Curtiss was hired as the PSU women’s field hockey coach in July 1987, coming directly from a stint at Boston College, just as Kraft is now. At the time she was hired, Kraft was 10 years old. A three-time first-team All-American in field hockey at Penn State and two-time U.S. Olympian, Morett-Curtiss is the dean of the coaching staff.

On the other end of the spectrum is women’s volleyball head coach Katie Schumacher-Cawley, a two-time All-American and national champion as a Penn State athlete herself. She was hired by Barbour on Jan. 10, 2022 to replace Russ Rose, the coaching legend who guided Penn State to seven national titles.

Early into his opening statement to the media on Friday, after being introduced by incoming president Neeli Bendapudi, Kraft acknowledged that he knows who The Man is on Penn State’s campus these days.

“We’re going to continue to win,” Kraft promised. “I need to talk with Cael and see how he’s done it so well so consistently. That’s the GOAT.”

Kraft mentioned three other head coaches by name — football coach James Franklin; men’s ice hockey coach Guy Gadowsky, who was on the search committee that hired Kraft; and men’s basketball coach Micah Shrewsberry, whose team finished 14-17 in his first season at Penn State.

Kraft on Franklin (and Sanderson): “Football game days help recruiting for all other sports. I think it starts with [football] and then everything else kind of falls in there. And Cael has shown it — that it leads to success elsewhere. Penn State is Penn State football and it’s a big part of it… James and I have known each other for a while, and I think it’s important to really understand the challenges, understand where they lie.”

Kraft on Gadowsky (and wrestling): “I told Guy we’re gonna get to the Frozen Four. This is a strong area for hockey and what I gotta do is I gotta help Guy get there… What are his things that we can help get him there? Hockey is awesome and it has a great following. Very loyal. It’s like wrestling: Very strong fan base and if you can do it, you can do it really well. Guy was fantastic. I’m excited to with him to help.”

Kraft on Shrewsberry: “I got to know Micah recently and, first off, Sandy hit a home run. He’s the real deal, and he is special. And what we have to do is change what people think about Penn State basketball. This is a place to come, and you can be successful. So, I think that’s the first thing. And Micah has to have — and this goes to all of our coaches — the resources, the ability to go and change that perception. Look, he’s the real deal. I got lucky with that one. Sandy did that one wonderfully. …But that one takes time, right?”

In his introductory remarks, Kraft effused about Ally Schlegel of the Penn State women’s soccer team; she was also on the search committee. Kraft did not mention any of the coaches of the women’s teams, including Dambach, who has 15 of those Big Ten championships that Kraft covets, or Morett-Curtiss, who has won 14 Big Ten titles. They rank 1-2 on the staff in that regard. Other than Sanderson (with 10), no other PSU coach has more than four.

I know a few students on the Penn State women’s ice hockey team, who confess at times they feel like second-class citizens — not because of their coach, but by athletics overall — even though Pegula Ice Arena recently hosted the women’s 2022 NCAA Frozen Four. Just last week, they shared with me their aspirations of one day playing in – and not just hosting – college hockey’s biggest spectacle.

And, somewhat ironically, Penn State women women’s basketball coach Carolyn Kieger, hired in April 2019 by Barbour, was given a contract extension on Friday, the same day Kraft’s own contract was approved by the Penn State Board of Trustees.

Of Penn State’s 31 teams, 15 are for women — second-most in the Big Ten, trailing only Ohio State’s 19.

CHARTING THE HEAD COACHES

A handy chart of all 24 current head coaches is below, ready to download and print-out for a Krafty and easy reference. It includes the year they were named as a head coach at Penn State, their Big Ten and national titles won at Penn State, and the total Learfield Cup points PSU teams have won under that particular coach’s tutelage since 2011. (Cael alert: a national title = 100 points.)

A measure of an athletic department’s overall success is best measured by a program’s finish nationally in the Learfield Cup. Penn State finished a disappointing 39th in 2020-21, but has had a pair of eighth-place finishes nationally under Barbour. After the 2021-22 winter sports season, Penn State is currently No. 17.

Under Kraft, Boston’s College athletic program finished No. 74 nationally in 2020-21, on the strength of the BC women’s lax team’s national title, and currently ranks No. 145 in the country for 2021-22, with football (5), fencing (38) and skiing (32) earning points. At Temple, under Kraft the Owls’ best finish as a program nationally was No. 152 overall, with other rankings of 169, 162 and 174.

HIRED BY JIM TARMAN (1982-93)

HIRED BY TIM CURLEY (1994-2011)

HIRED BY DAVE JOYNER (2011-14)

HIRED BY SANDY BARBOUR

* Men’s volleyball, fencing and women’s ice hockey are not Big Ten sponsored sports.

** Gondak’s teams’ Learfield points: Women – XC, 279.5; Indoor T&F, 210.25; Outdoor T&F, 132. Men – XC, 168.5; Indoor T&F, 211.75; Outdoor T&F, 232.75.