Cal Poly athletics director candidate Don Oberhelman held a 30-minute open form in the Christopher Cohan Performing Arts Center lobby yesterday. Currently, Oberhelman serves as the senior associate athletics director at San Diego State, but he made it clear he is ready to trade in the larger university lifestyle to become a Mustang.
“I think (my) experiences have helped make me be in the position where I am today, to be able to have this opportunity,” Oberhelman said. “This has been a dream of mine, to serve as a Division I athletics director.”
Oberhelman said he caught the first train to Cal Poly after former athletics director Alison Cone announced her retirement in December. He wanted to familiarize himself with the university, and said he made sure to leave no sidewalk untouched as he and his wife explored the campus.
“We were really impressed with the spirit and the collegiate atmosphere that exists at Cal Poly,” he said. “That, you cannot artificially create, but it exists here.”
Oberhelman would know, too. He has been either enrolled or employed at six universities. He received a bachelor’s degree from Kansas State and his master’s from Florida State.
Oberhelman then went on to hold positions at Florida State as a compliance assistant (1995-98), Texas A&M as an education coordinator (1998-2002) and at the University of Southern Mississippi as a senior associate AD, among other positions (2002-07).
He took his current position at San Diego State in 2007 and has since served as interim AD for a four-month period, after former athletics director Jeff Schemmel resigned. During his time at San Diego State, the Aztecs’ competitive success has been the best in their athletic history and has even improved its Directors’ Cup (based on overall athletic achievements) standing to reach 65, Oberhelman said.
It was at San Diego State where Oberhelman said he learned the importance of working as a team within the athletics department. The department should work as a cohesive group and focus all its energy to serving the student athlete.
This helps greatly in areas such as funding.
“In this budget downturn, we’re all facing in the state of California, we’ve been able to grow (San Diego State’s) athletic budget by $6 million, from $27 to 33 million — due to fundraising, ticket sales, inflation of student fees and things like that,” he said.
Of that money, $900,000 came directly from charitable giving to the Aztecs’ athletics department, and this kind of support from the community is important to athletics, he said.
“We have to go out and talk to people,” Oberhelman said. “Sell our mission, sell our mission in relation to the university and sell the student athlete. Prove we’re worthy of support.”
When asked by Don Morris, member of the Cal Poly Alumni Association board of directors and athletics Hall of Fame, how significant of a roll hall of fame members will have, Oberhelman responded with as much as they are willing.
“We need to engage people to come support the student athletes, and if that’s merely just coming and showing up at the games, that’s good enough,” Oberhelman said. “(Hall of fame members are) our most important form of donor base. Those are the ones who truly understand the roll athletics can play in our education.”
Morris later said he was impressed by Oberhelman’s knowledge of Cal Poly athletics and felt Oberhelman did his research, such as when he mentioned having hall of fame members LeCharis McDaniel and Ted Tollner help get him oriented to Cal Poly.
“I think he has a good grasp of the reality of situation for Cal Poly athletics, and for the advancement that needs to be done,” Morris said. “I was very impressed. He sounds like the guy for job to me, and I’ve been through probably 10 athletics directors in my years at Cal Poly.”
From a current student athlete’s perspective, Anna Cahn — a pitcher for the Cal Poly softball team — said she was initially concerned about Oberhelman moving from a larger university with a larger budget like San Diego State to Cal Poly with a smaller budget.
“I thought it’d be hard for him coming to a place with a smaller budget,” Cahn said. “But hearing him speak about his experiences at Southern Miss, it seems more like he knows where we are coming from, and how understaffed we are and how a lower budget school works.”
During the forum, Oberhelman said, when he worked at Southern Miss, he remembered times when he would work the student gates at events because the staff was short.
“I do have a great understanding of what it takes to operate with a smaller budget,” Oberhelman said. “There is work to be done, and if that means we’re all going to pitch in one day, that’s what we did. I really enjoyed that we-can-get-this-done kind of attitude.”
Cahn said the other points Oberhelman brought up, such as how lucky Cal Poly teams are to have home games held on campus, impressed her as well.
“He seems really personable and down to Earth, and he is a good candidate,” Cahn said.