This is the 33rd installment of a series of 35 moments, milestones, and facts that will be featured throughout the 2013-14 academic year to celebrate the 35th Anniversary of the Great Lakes Valley Conference.
During his tenure in the Great Lakes Valley Conference as Northern Kentucky University’s faculty athletic representative, Dr. Thomas Kearns always felt a purpose of service. Unlike many NCAA Division II conferences, the GLVC empowers the faculty athletic representative position with full voting privileges for all league matters, and that was something Kearns never took lightly.
That role in particular was a form of service to the conference, whereas that position helped strengthen the governance structure and enact change over the years all with the purpose of building on the conference’s foundation set in 1978.
As president of the league’s FAR group, Kearns was often the go-to person for all GLVC matters and served as the intermediary between the conference administrators and the Council of Presidents. Prior to hiring Carl McAloose as the league’s first full-time commissioner in 1996, Kearns was frequently found delving into conference-related issues all for the greater good of the league.
“I told the presidents at one point that I was putting in 12-18 hours a week to the conference as an FAR and that was pretty unreasonable for that position,” Kearns said.
It is because of those 23 years of dedication to the league that Kearns was honored in 2010 when Northern Kentucky soccer player Kevin Listerman was the first recipient of the Dr. Thomas Kearns Service Award. The annual honor is presented to an individual or group that has contributed to the success of the GLVC as it relates to the NCAA Division II attributes of learning, balance, resourcefulness, sportsmanship, passion and service.
It was a humbling moment for Kearns, who has always been enamored by the idea of a service award.
“I was really surprised by it, but the minute I was told what the award was I was really happy,” Kearns said. “This kind of award was something Charlie (referencing the late University of Southern Indiana faculty athletic representative Dr. Charles Bertram) and I talked about. USI has a similar award on its campus and Charlie was the first recipient to earn the honor.”
Kearns served the GLVC as both treasurer and president during his tenure at NKU and assisted with the budget reporting system and the current revenue sharing policy. He spearheaded the league’s first major expansion, wrote the GLVC Hall of Fame guidelines, served on the initial GLVC Awards Committee and developed and maintained the GLVC Handbook.
In regards to expansion, Kearns noted that from 1992 to 1994 there was a two-year moratorium placed on conference expansion talks. The league had not seriously looked at expanding past its current 10-member total at that time, but involvement at the presidential level became more prevalent and the directive to expand was delivered.
On June 7, 1994, the GLVC's Council of Presidents voted to undergo what would be the first multiple-school expansion in the league's history and approve Quincy University, Southern Illinois University Edwardsville and University of Wisconsin-Parkside as the 11th, 12th and 13th members. Prior to the 1994 expansion, only Lewis University (1981), Indiana University-Purdue University at Fort Wayne (1983), now commonly referred to as IPFW, Northern Kentucky (1984), and Kentucky State University (1988) had been admitted to the league, and it was always just one school at a time.
“At that time, the presidents wanted to get more involved in the governance, so it took some compromising,” Kearns said. “Ultimately, a lot of good things came out of it. The presidents are now in a position to help, and I can tell you we would not have had a conference office staff or a commissioner had it not been for the presidents coming on board.”
Richard F. Scharf and Kenneth Lindsey were among the part-time administrators to have had previously served in the role of GLVC Commissioner, however their respective ties to Saint Joseph’s College and the University of Louisville did not allow for them to spend their entire time on conference matters. During some years, Scharf was working for less than a $1,000 stipend.
Kearns helped lead the national search for Lindsey and four individuals emerged as the top candidates. Former Bellarmine University athletic director Jay Gardiner and Kearns accompanied the GLVC presidents to their annual business meeting at the University of Missouri-St. Louis where Kearns had arranged for the four finalists to interview in person throughout the day, and ultimately McAloose got the job.
Kearns was also determined to streamline the legislation process within the league by forming the conference’s official handbook. Noting that annual meetings used to consist of athletic directors, faculty athletic representatives, sports information directors and both men’s and women’s basketball coaches, minutes from said meetings were inconsistent and often times incomplete.
“That was pure frustration,” Kearns said. “We would go into meetings and say, ‘Didn’t we talk about this in past meetings?’ I told (then GLVC Commissioner) Dick Scharf that I would do the handbook only if he would help me. So we ended up meeting on several occasions over the course of a year, whether I went up early to a Northern Kentucky basketball game at Saint Joseph’s or we met at IPFW for the conference volleyball championship.”
Scheduling was also a point of emphasis for Kearns, and once again, he was there to spearhead the project for the league. What first started as merely a basketball schedule where everyone was to play in pairs with another GLVC school in close proximity to its campus, the format quickly turned to a template for others to use. Throughout the years, that scheduling philosophy was implemented elsewhere as others sports earned conference sponsorship.
Since retiring in 2007 and witnessing Northern Kentucky reclassify to NCAA Division I and leave the GLVC in 2012, Kearns remains linked to the league through the annual service award that bears his name.
He was enthusiastic to learn that Listerman was the award’s first honoree, and likewise when SIU Edwardsville SID Eric Hess was honored with the distinction two years ago. In 2013, Kearns was unfamiliar with Dave and Lois Stevens, but read about their volunteer work at the GLVC basketball tournaments when the event was held in Evansville, Indiana.
He found great joy this past year when Roy Pickerill was named as the 2014 recipient. The long-time sports information director at Kentucky Wesleyan College just finished up his 35th year of assisting in the promotion of GLVC sports and NCAA Division II basketball.
“Roy and I have known each other for 30 years,” Kearns said. “We worked together on some things over the years. When they brought the Elite Eight to Louisville, the conference SIDs had to come in and help. Most of them had to take vacation time, so Roy asked me if we as a league could look into providing some compensation for them and we were able to work that out.”
The Dr. Thomas Kearns Service Award is now a staple among the postseason awards the conference office hands out each year.
Several member institutions boast administrators, coaches, student-athletes and volunteers who go above the call of duty as it relates to providing a service to that school. However, there are a select few that put in the extra hours to help showcase the GLVC as the premier NCAA Division II conference in the country.
They follow the path set forth by Dr. Thomas Kearns, who devoted his time and hard work for the greater good of the conference and for one simple reason.
“It was an honor to serve.”