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Nicholls State baseball coach Seth Thibodeaux remembers a time when the Colonels were short both scholarships and practice time because their players couldn’t perform in the classroom.
“It was brutal,” the coach remembers. “Those were not good times, I can assure you. We never want to go back to that.”
Colonels Athletics Director Rob Bernardi also vividly remembers those days. That’s because Nicholls baseball was not alone in the academic struggles. They were instead just one sport in an entire university athletic department drowning in its efforts to stay penalty-free because of classroom struggles, player retention and low graduation rates.
“That wasn’t very long ago either,” Bernardi said looking back.
My, oh my, how things have changed in Thibodaux.
After long being in proverbial NCAA purgatory because of poor Academic Progress Rate (APR) scores, the Colonels have redefined themselves and are a model athletic department in terms of academic compliance.
The majority of the school’s sports scored above the NCAA’s penalty threshold for the 2010-11 seasons – something that didn’t seem possible a handful of years ago.
“It’s so commendable,” Bernardi said. “We’ve been fortunate to do so much in such a short period of time. There’s been so much dedication and commitment by our coaches to recruit academically qualified and academically ambitious students. … And once they are here, there’s been an equally strong push administratively and within our faculty to challenge and inspire the kids so that they could do solid work in the classroom to stay qualified. … It’s been a true team effort.”
The way the NCAA calculates APR is somewhat complex – it’s a mathematical formula that gives points to programs that retain athletes that are in good academic standing and also points to those teams that graduate senior student-athletes.
A perfect score for a team is 1,000.
To avoid NCAA penalties, a team must score 925 or above.
Penalties are not levied onto a team if they drop below 925 in an individual year. The penalty phase begins after a team’s APR score is below 925 as a four-year average.
In the 2004-05 sporting year alone, nine of Nicholls’ 13 sports were below the 925 thresholds for individual seasons.
Baseball had a mark of 837. Men’s basketball bottomed out at 833. Football was the low-man in the athletics department with a mark of 809.
“I’m not the kind of guy who ever believes that you can’t do something – I believe that you can do anything that you set your mind to,” Thibodeaux said. “But with that said, those still were some frustrating times for us because we just didn’t know how the future was going to shape out.”
But from times of struggle have come change.
Nicholls’ APR woes are almost all gone.
In the latest APR report, 12 of 13 Nicholls sports have improved their score in comparison to 2004-05’s numbers – some sports even seeing leaps of more than 100 points.
The lone program to see a drop in its score is women’s basketball.
But those numbers are skewed because after scoring 939 in 2004-05, Nicholls women’s basketball tanked in the back half of the past decade and had an APR that hovered in the mid 800s.
They have since made more than a 60-point comeback under coach DoBee Plaisance and have risen back to their current mark of 923 for the 2010-11 year.
“We are, in a lot of ways, a model program in terms of overcoming APR obstacles and also doing what we’re supposed to do, which is getting students here to progress toward their degree,” Bernardi said. “Up and down, we’re just doing a great job. Women’s basketball and baseball were just in dreadful condition, as was football. Coach Dobee, Seth Thibodeaux, Coach Stubbs and everyone across the board has done a wonderful job. … That goes for all of our sports.”
One of the biggest ways Bernardi believes the school has turned around its academic standing among athletics is through admissions.
The athletic director touted the fact that Nicholls is now a selective admissions university – a change from their prior open admissions policy.
“We get more qualified students just with that,” Bernardi said.
Aside from that, Bernardi also lauded the creative juices and sheer will power of his coaches.
One example of that could come from baseball where Thibodeaux said he “pounds” the importance of academics into his players.
The coach said Nicholls has a team-wide goal to have a 3.0 GPA each season.
When Nicholls achieves classroom success, Thibodeaux said he also saves a sliver of his budget to reward the team for its successes.
“We keep our eyes on them and really make sure they know it’s important,” Thibodeaux said. “We do it on the bus. We do study hall before games. It’s just something that we work hard to fulfill. … It surely makes my job a little more of a headache sometimes, but we follow-up on it.
“We take away from them when it’s not going like we want and we reward them when it is good. For example, when our guys got their 3.0 GPA in the fall, we made sure that our team budget got our guys a new travel suit or new lockers in the locker room. Whatever they do academically, they are rewarded for it.”
The Colonels’ soccer team doesn’t follow the same plan as baseball.
But soccer coach Dylan Harrison said he is also conscious of academics in all aspects of his job.
Harrison said he keeps a close eye on a student’s GPA when recruiting.
Whatever he does is working. Nicholls soccer is one of the highest-scoring programs on the campus with a gleaming 982 APR score.
Nicholls soccer has never been in danger of APR penalties.
“A lot of it starts in the earliest stages – the recruiting,” Harrison said. “Our administration has laid out a clear plan and we have some pretty tough requirements set in terms of who we can recruit and what is required of our student athletes. … We pay close attention to those things early on in the process and it really helps us competitively because we don’t have many set plays. We want our players to be able to have the ability to think and respond freely in the heat of the game.”
Thibodeaux agreed and added that the boosted scores also mean he has more flexibility to roll the dice on a supremely talented player who is marginal academically.
“We can roll the dice more – that’s exactly right,” the baseball coach said. “And I’m a dice-rolling kind of guy. It’s not something we want to do often, of course. But sometimes to stay competitive, you have to take a chance or two here or there.”
Whether the boosted scores and increased flexibility lead to more athletic prowess in the standings remains to be seen.
Regardless, Bernardi can rest easier at night knowing his athletic department is producing more polished adults.
“That’s really what it’s about – graduating these kids,” Bernardi said. “Having and creating an alumni base is truly the most important thing. And we’re doing that. … We’ve done a great job. Maybe it’s because we remember how things used to be and we don’t want to ever go back to that place. But whatever it is, I’m very proud of everyone involved for their hard work and dedication.”
Nicholls State football players (top) rev up before a game.
