Athletic Program – Another MSCC Success Story

We get accused on occasion of being more concerned about doing cool things than stopping long enough to explain how cool some of those things really are. We are probably even a little guilty of that, especially when so many great things are happening on our campus. But you don’t have to spend much time on this blog site to know that our fledgling athletic program has come a long way in very short period of time.

To put it in perspective, at this time four years ago, the dream of an intercollegiate sports program on our campus was just a dream. Now we are the defending men’s and women’s Region 2 champions, and several of our players are moving to the next level at four-year institutions where somebody else will pay for them to be there. That is exactly what we intended to see happen. Our goal has always been to put deserving student-athletes in a program that improves their academic and athletic skills, give them the opportunity to become mature and well-rounded on and off the court, and allow them to capitalize on their athletic skills to advance their education.

The effort started when legendary coach Andy Stoglin walked into my office four years ago around this time. We talked for about 30 minutes before he addressed the main issue he had come to discuss. He said, “I don’t understand why a place like this in eastern Arkansas does not have a college basketball program.” I told him, “Coach, I would love to have a college basketball program, but we’re broke and can’t afford it. The most important thing we would have to have is a very highlight-respected name to start the program.” He explained to me pretty quickly that he was that guy and that we could afford him. He was right on both counts, and he basically laid the laid the groundwork for where we are today.

The other most significant parts of the process, like many other notable evolutions for our institution, came through the generosity of Southland Park Gaming and Racing and Mr. Tommy Goldsby. Southland agreed to provide $250,000 over a 10-year period to support a sports program, and Mr. Goldsby basically said, “If you can put together the rest of it, we will help you figure out how to move forward with some scholarship opportunities.”

After two years in Division III, we successfully petitioned the National Junior College Athletic Association to move to Division II, giving us the opportunity to offer tuition, fee, and book scholarships to student-athletes. In just our second year in Division II we won our region and finished as the District XVI runners-up. If you equate that to the NCAA, we basically made it to the 64-team tournament.  In just four years, we went from not having a program to making it to the national tournament.

When we started this program, our emphasis was to work with students who needed an opportunity to get stronger academically and who maybe needed to address some other issues in their personal lives. We sought students who could benefit from heavy investments in character development and educational assistance while offering the financial support that an athletic scholarship provides. So for us we didn’t start out, primarily, with goals of traditional programs of regional championships and district tournament appearances. Our program is built around a model that says we simply want to use athletics to give our student-athletes another opportunity to continue their education in a setting they might not otherwise be able to afford or access.

So for us to have reached such an advanced the level of academic and on-court success is truly a testament to a great bunch of coaches, a great bunch of student-athletes, an excellent academic support system, and unwavering community support. Based on our success over the last four years, we have aspirations of even greater accomplishments in the future.

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