Five months before it recommended eliminating four varsity sports for costs and other reasons, the Naval Academy Athletic Association bought a $317,000 condominium for the school's athletic director and sent nearly 100 academy officials and guests on an all-expense paid trip to the Army-Navy game in Philadelphia.
The NAAA, a tax-exempt, private organization that finances academy sports, paid cash in December 1992 for the sprawling condominium at The Villages at Summer Place, a private community south of Annapolis within steps of Gingerville Creek, according to state and Anne Arundel County records.
The association is listed as the owner of the condominium, and the resident is Jack Lengyel, the Naval Academy's athletic director and NAAA's president.
One week before buying the condominium, the association picked up the tab for 96 academy officials and their guests at the Wyndham Franklin Plaza Hotel in Philadelphia, where room rates range from $155 a night for a single to $1,000 a night for the vice presidential suite. Rear Adm. Thomas C. Lynch, academy superintendent, stayed in that suite, according to the guest list obtained by The Sun.
Hotel officials noted, however, that they negotiate group rates.
Mr. Lengyel said he could not offer any information on the cost of the trip, an annual event.
The annual budgets for the four teams that were eliminated totaled $250,000.
The century-old NAAA, separate but closely linked to the Naval Academy, does not receive any government money. Instead, its estimated $7 million annual budget comes from TV rights for Navy football, ticket sales, investments, public donations and dues from its 11,000 members.
Admiral Lynch approves the association's budget and approved the condo purchase, Mr. Lengyel said.
The spending on real estate investment and on the Philadelphia trip, while sports programs are being cut, raises questions about whether NAAA lives up to its stated purposes.
NAAA is designed to "promote, influence and assist in financing the athletic contests" at the Naval Academy, according to its 1892 charter and its application for tax-exempt status filed with the charitable division of the Maryland Secretary of State's office.
"All revenue received by the NAAA is committed to the support of the academy's intercollegiate athletic program," the group wrote in the academy's 1993 Navy Football Guide.
Mr. Lengyel vigorously defended the NAAA's condominium purchase and the Philadelphia trip.
The 59-year-old athletic director said his contract calls for him to live at the academy. But when his academy housing was being renovated a year and a half ago, it was decided that the NAAA would purchase a house as an investment rather than rent. "We really performed a fiduciary responsibility," he said.
Mr. Lengyel said many of the academy officials were "working" at the Army-Navy game, while the private citizens were receiving a "reward" for their support of Navy sports. Among the guests were prominent Annapolis businessmen, such as Jerry Hardesty, owner of the Middleton Tavern.
"There were no freeloaders there. . . . You have to spend money to make money," Mr. Lengyel said.
It was Mr. Lengyel who announced at a May 1993 news conference that the academy would cut men's and women's fencing, women's gymnastics and men's volleyball, effecting about 80 midshipmen. The school also reduced the men's pistol team to club status, meaning the NAAA would no longer support it financially.
"We just didn't cut programs, we reviewed all the programs," Mr. Lengyel said at the time, noting that brigade and fan interest, availability of competition and revenue potential weighed in the decision. "We've trimmed costs off of all of our sports."
The guest list for the Philadelphia trip shows that 21 top academy officials had their meals and incidentals paid for by the NAAA. Most guests stayed two nights.
In addition to Mr. Lengyel and Admiral Lynch, the officials included Capt. John B. Padgett, the commandant of midshipmen who also oversees NAAA spending and decisions affecting the sports teams. Those three stayed in separate suites.
Neither the admiral nor the commandant were available for comment, said Lt. Cmdr. Paul Weishaupt, an academy spokesman.
In addition to the condominium, the NAAA owns a house on Lookout Lane near the North Severn Naval Station. Until recently it was the home of Michael A. Bobinski, the association's treasurer and the academy's associate director of athletics.
In April, Mr. Bobinski became the athletic director at the University of Akron in Ohio. Reached in Ohio, Mr. Bobinski said the three-bedroom house was purchased for the football coach, who declined to live there. He said he paid $600 per month in rent.
Purchased by NAAA in 1982 for $154,000, the Lookout Lane house is now assessed at $298,000, according to state and county records.
Mr. Lengyel said a football coach would live there and pay about $800 per month in rent.
The association's most recent tax filing with the Internal Revenue Service, which covers the year ending May 31, 1993, does not list the residential properties, the condominium purchase, or that Mr. Lengyel was receiving housing.
The IRS filing states Mr. Lengyel receives $91,000 in "compensation" and another $3,646 in unspecified employee benefits. For expense account and other allowances, it is checked "0" for Mr. Lengyel.
Sam Serio, a spokesman with the Baltimore office of the IRS, said both the purchase of the condominium for an organization official and any inclusion of housing in a compensation package should be listed as "other benefits" on the tax form.
"It should be listed somewhere," Mr. Serio said.
"It does raise questions in our mind," said Susan E. Elson, legal officer with the Maryland Secretary of State's charitable division.
The office will write the NAAA and ask for an explanation, she said.
Mr. Lengyel said he was uncertain why the IRS filing did not include that information, saying he would check with his auditor. "There's no intent on our part in giv
ing misleading information," he said.
Ed Donofrio, a 1973 academy graduate and former fencing coach, has tried in vain to get the Navy to reverse its decision about the fencing team, which was nearly as old as the 149-year-old academy.
"They bought a $317,000 condo?" he asked. "That's a nice perk. That's ridiculous."
Mr. Donofrio, a business executive, said team costs amounted to about $60,000 to $70,000 each year. It was so popular that midshipmen had to be turned away. Some 65 male and female midshipmen competed, he said, and fans always packed their matches.
Team members were "very upset" by the decision, he said. One team member, Brodie Prieto, won a gold medal at the 1993 Eastern Intercollegiate Fencing Championships. But with the elimination of the team, Mr. Donofrio said, "he didn't get to defend his title this year."
William Karditzas, pistol team coach and a 1984 academy graduate, said questions about NAAA spending are "hard . . . for me to comment on."
"Does that support [academy sports]? I don't know if it does or not," he said.
Because the 15-member pistol team has been reduced to a club sport, midshipmen pay for their own meals, lodging and transportation when they travel with the team.
The team had a $10,000 annual budget, not including travel costs, he said. Mr. Karditzas, who received $5,000 a year as coach, now volunteers his time.
Asked whether the money spent on the condominium and the Philadelphia trip would have been better spent on the teams, Mr. Lengyel reiterated that money was only one of several reasons the sports were eliminated.
"The purpose of our association is
to sponsor a reasonable number of sports," he said, noting that the school has 29 varsity teams.
Based at the academy in Ricketts Hall, the NAAA is overseen by a six-member Board of Control composed of officers and civilian academy officials, headed by the commandant of midshipmen. Decisions affecting the sports teams must receive the approval of the academy's superintendent.
"It was an NAAA decision first" to cut the teams, said Tom Bates, the academy's sports information director. Then it was approved by the board and the superintendent.
According to its constitution, the NAAA Board of Control, which generally meets monthly, must approve all decisions, ranging from ticket issuance to spending and purchase of property. The academy superintendent is required to approve the NAAA's annual budget.
Board members also review monthly reports of the treasurer and are required to conduct an annual audit, which also is sent to the superintendent.
The NAAA constitution also states that outside of renumeration for its officers and employees, income and property of the association shall be applied solely toward supporting academy athletics.
The association is exempt from paying state and federal income taxes.
In addition, it is exempt from sales taxes on purchases it makes for the organization, although the houses would not be included, said Marvin Bond, a spokesman for the state comptroller's office.
NAAA owns and maintains the 30,000-seat Navy-Marine Corps Memorial Stadium, the location for Navy's home football games and the academy's cap-tossing graduation, a golf course and other facilities for the academy.
JTC