USC to see more facility improvements
The most important thing to Athletics Director Eric Hyman is the student-athlete.
When asked what he is most proud of, Hyman gestures toward a photo of a Gamecock football player with his arm around Hyman.
“It’s when the parents of a student-athlete come and thank you for what the entire department has done for their daughter or their son,” Hyman said. “Or when a women’s basketball player writes you and thanks you for their experience. When a football player comes up to you, puts his arm around you and thanks you. That’s what I’m most proud of. I think trying to create that culture where, when we have a student-athlete come in here, we really care for them as people. Sometimes it’s got to be tough love, but basically the bottom line is the student-athletes know we have their best interests at heart.”
Hyman’s pledge to student-athletes inspired his long-range plan to improve athletics facilities. It was phased starting with Carolina Stadium, which opened in 2009 and was christened with back-to-back national championships. Next was the Dodie Anderson Academic Enrichment Center, and on Monday, it was the new Carolina Tennis Center that was being dedicated. If things go as scheduled, a new tailgating area where the South Carolina Sate Farmers Market once stood across from Williams-Brice Stadium, as well as a new video board inside of the stadium, should be ready before the start of football season.
When the softball season concludes, work on the softball stadium will begin, and there are also plans for new football practice fields and a new football indoor facility. When Hyman came to South Carolina, he conducted studies that determined that, in regards to facilities, South Carolina was near the bottom in several areas in the SEC.
“When I started, what I did was, as you do when you go to a new job, is make assessments,” Hyman said. “The first three months I tried to assess where we were. In the assessments, one of the issues I tried to find out was where were we in the (coaches’) eyes in relationship to our competition. There were some that were in pretty good shape, and there were others that had a large room for growth.”
Hyman believes facilities play a crucial role in the recruiting process, which affects the success of the team. In exit interviews he’s done with senior student-athletes throughout his career, one of the top four reasons a student-athlete chooses one school over another is facilities.
“If you were looking at two different schools to go to college, you’d want to go to the one that had reasonable dormitory rooms, reasonable classrooms, and all of those kinds of things to make it attractive for you,” Hyman said. “There’s no difference in our business. You’ve got to have the facilities to make it attractive because if you were going to school here and you’re looking at Georgia or North Carolina, you’re comparing them. It’s the same thing as what we do athletically. We compare ourselves to Georgia, Florida, Tennessee — these are the people we’re recruiting against. In the process of a young person, that’s going to be a factor.”
In the assessments Hyman conducted, he found USC was also behind in its academic resources. Microsoft ’95 was being used when he arrived in 2005, and there were just four or five laptops and 18 computers for 600 student-athletes. Along with improving the resources, Hyman instituted an attendance policy for class, where a student-athlete could miss playing time if he or she violates that policy. As a result, student-athletes reached their highest combined GPA in program history in the fall semester.
While Hyman is invested in the student-athletes interests, he is also invested in the interests of the fans. In response to the apathy by the fan base toward men’s basketball, which has a 1-9 record in league play, Hyman said that when a team doesn’t do well, there’s usually apathy. He maintains his stance on patience. He references the 2008 football team, which lost to Clemson in the last game before falling to Iowa in the Outback Bowl, where fans didn’t have patience with the program, but in four years the Gamecocks reached a program-first 11-win season. Nevertheless, Hyman said he can understand the “negative chatter.”
“In [USC basketball coach Darrin Horn’s] first year, he tied for the SEC East,” Hyman said. “In [USC women’s basketball coach Dawn Staley’s] first year, she won 10 games. Dawn had not had experienced players, and Darrin had more experienced players. Now, the experience is gone, so we’re at the bottom working our way up. Dawn’s built a program because she’s gotten some more experience. What she’s doing with women’s basketball has been absolutely terrific. There are some things that have never been accomplished here when you look back through it, like the football team this year — they did things that have never been accomplished before. That’s what we’re trying to do, and the time lines are different with different sports.”