During practice last week, the Goucher College swim team clambered out of the pool, raced outside, flopped to the ground and made angels in the snow. It's that kind of spontaneity that attracted athletic director Geoff Miller to the school nine years ago - and keeps him there.
It's the fresh-air atmosphere of Division III athletics that appeals to Miller, 48. He runs a department that, in contrast to the restraints of Division I, thrives in its flexibility.
At Goucher, for instance, a math professor as "guest coach" gets to try his hand at directing lacrosse. A former high school wrestler gets it in his mind to try out for the swim team - and makes it. A field hockey player with a flair for drama manages to play her position and a lead role in the college production of Hansel and Gretel.
At Goucher, a private, woodsy liberal arts college of 1,250 students in Towson, Geoff Miller prides himself in knowing not only the names of the 200 athletes, but also fragments of each one's personal life. He knows their strengths, their stresses and even some of their siblings.
Division I, he says, "takes you too far away from interactions with student-athletes." That's why he has chosen to spend his entire career at the Division III level. Before Goucher, he served seven years as athletic director at Washington College, in Chestertown, and seven previous as associate AD and lacrosse coach at Guilford (N.C.) College. Starting out, after graduating from Amherst College, he was assistant athletic director and coached lacrosse at Swarthmore College in his hometown in Pennsylvania.
What has he learned over the years about competitors at small colleges?
"Athletics is important to these kids. They're putting in time and emotional energy," he says. "The major difference is that the Division I athlete is a little faster, quicker, stronger. But they all have the same heart, and drive."
He spends several hours each day interacting with students, personalizing his banter. For example, in the training room he encounters Jonathon Fitzgerald, a basketball player from Pennsylvania, with whom Miller swaps chatter about the NFL's Philadelphia Eagles. Nearby, on the same afternoon, he runs into Cindy Dunn, a freshman from New Hampshire who plays field hockey and lacrosse.
"I haven't seen you yet in lacrosse," Miller offers.
"I'm really bad," Dunn whispers.
Miller appears to bristle. "C'mon, what kind of attitude is that?" he says. Dunn smiles. Mission accomplished.
"This is my ministry," Miller says of his job. "We're charged to make the world a better place, and to treat people with respect."
How do students feel about the attention?
"He [Miller] loves talking to students about how they're doing and what they're up to," says Emily Parsons, a junior lacrosse player from Maine. "Having him pat you on the back and say 'great job' is like having your parents keeping an eye on you, and not getting lost in the shuffle."
For some of his charges, Miller does more. He meets regularly with two women basketball players to teach them time management. "Geoff invests in people," says women's basketball coach Charleata Neal.
Accentuating the "student" in student-athlete is part of Miller's strategy to mend the rift that existed between Goucher's academic and sports programs before his arrival in 1994. Then, athletics was considered a drain on students' time by faculty still rankled by the college's decision to admit males in 1986. Men? Sports? What was Goucher thinking?
"That [academic/athletic] relationship was close to fractious when Geoff came," says Bob Lewand, a math professor at Goucher for 26 years. Gradually, he says, Miller has closed that gap: "He built a bridge between those disciplines. Geoff made it clear his priority is getting student-athletes through school successfully."
Statistics back his claim. Goucher fields seven men's teams, in sports ranging from cross country to lacrosse, and 10 women's teams (soccer to equestrian). Last year, all but two of those squads realized a combined grade point average of 3.0 (B average) or better.
For the first time, men's basketball made the 3.0 cut. The team that won four league titles in the 1990s didn't have such a stellar classroom mark before. "Five years ago, that [3.0] would have been unthinkable," says Lewand. As Goucher's faculty athletics representative, Lewand reports annually about the players' academic progress. "Most years, when I share the basketball team's GPA with the faculty, I'm met with a big 'ho-hum,' " he says. "This time, there was an ovation."
Last year, on the court, the men's team finished 13-13. So far this season, it is 4-2.
Overall, Goucher took academic laurels in the Capital Athletic Conference in 2002. Fully 54 percent of its athletes achieved a GPA of 3.2 or more; Catholic University was second (45 percent).
What steps did Miller take to boost those grades? Two years ago, he created the post of academic support coordinator, a job that entails overseeing each athlete's classroom performance and offering tutoring or other measures when it falls short. For another thing, he hired coaches with the understanding that they comb high schools for recruits who fit Goucher's student profile. For another, he created a guest coach program to soften the "us-vs.-them" mentality that had separated athletics from the intellectual purists.
Four or five times a year, a faculty member is invited to attend a team's practice and be present on the sidelines at a game ... without calling plays. Lewand still recalls his experience four years ago at a lacrosse game: "It was an eye-opener for me to see my students in a different context, to see the teamwork and discipline these guys are capable of. I realized some techniques that coaches employ could be applied in the classroom as well."
The upshot: The math professor toughened up on players in his classes.
Not all of the faculty is on board. "Most professors are very supportive of athletes," says Parsons, the lacrosse player. "But I have friends in the art department who are afraid to wear their team shirts to class, because the [instructors] will know they are athletes."
Geoff Miller contends his department has recruited athletes who are well-rounded enough to flourish on the rest of the campus. "These kids are pretty balanced, not one-dimensional. When they're riding in a van to a game, they can talk about politics, economics or philosophy."
Says Goucher president Sanford Ungar: "On a small liberal arts campus, you find people suspicious of athletics - and on a campus of mostly women, they can be suspicious of male athletes. People think, 'Oh, they lowered the [admissions] standards for the men.' Well, that's not true - and Geoff has helped to dispel those stereotypes."