WSU Athletic Director Sexton Stresses Success On and Off the Field
Published Aug 17, 2009
Wichita State University Athletic Director Eric Sexton has deep roots at the institution.
Wichita State University has long provided Kansans with an opportunity to both play and watch top-quality NCAA Division I athletics. Over the decades, many premier athletes have spent their college years as WSU Shockers, including legendary football coach Bill Parcells, World Series hero Joe Carter and NBA all-star Xavier McDaniel, the first player in NCAA history to lead the nation in both scoring and rebounding.
Today, sports loom as large as ever at WSU. In 2006-07, the men’s basketball team sold out every game at the Charles Koch Arena, which underwent a $25 million renovation in 2003. From 2003 to 2007, the school won four straight Missouri Valley Conference All Sports trophies. And in 2008, Shocker teams picked up conference championships in men’s golf, men’s baseball, women’s volleyball and women’s cross country.
The national pastime has a particularly strong tradition at WSU, and the 2008 title was the baseball team’s 16th. Under legendary coach Gene Stephenson, the last 30 years have seen Shocker teams rack up one national championship and more wins than any other Division I program. WSU alumni who have gone on to the big leagues include Doug Mirabelli, Braden Looper and Casey Blake.
But if baseball has a long and storied history at WSU, a more under-the-radar sport is making an impressive bid for Shocker hearts and minds. A perennial powerhouse, the men’s bowling team won its eighth national title in 2008. Since the first national tournament in 1975, men and women WSU bowlers have picked up 15 championships.
Athletic Director Eric Sexton oversees WSU sports. Sexton’s roots run deep at Wichita State and in the surrounding community. Growing up just outside Wichita, he’s the son of Linwood Sexton, WSU’s career football rushing leader. At WSU, the younger Sexton was a member of the golf team. After obtaining a master’s degree in public administration and a doctorate in political science, he went to work for WSU. Before taking on the A.D. role, Sexton served as the university’s executive director for government relations and board of trustees.
“We had a good, strong year,” Sexton says of WSU athletics. “Our goal is to increase the school’s exposure at the NCAA level and to provide an environment allowing student athletes to flourish on and off the field.”
Bearing out this philosophy, 50 Shockers were named to the 2008 Missouri Valley Conference first and honorable mention scholar-athlete teams. Other off-field achievements include the involvement of the women’s basketball team in Think Pink Week, a series of breast cancer awareness events.
“Athletics is a window to the university – a way to see what Wichita State does, what it means to our community and the opportunities it affords the people of South Central Kansas,” Sexton says.
Story by Jon Brooks
Photo by Todd Bennett
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