Yale AD Vicky Chun navigating one challenge after another
When you’re involved with athletics, Vicky Chun said, nothing should surprise you.
“Ever,” she said. Still, after Chun replaced retiring athletic director Tom Beckett in 2018, who would have guessed there’d be a national admissions scandal that touched everyone from Yale’s former women’s soccer coach Rudy Meredith to Aunt Becky at USC? The largest halftime protest college football has ever seen, over climate change at the Harvard game no less? And?
“They say it usually comes in threes,” Chun said, “not realizing the incoming pandemic.”
None of those things were within her control, of course. The Varsity Blues scandal took place before her arrival.
There is, however, a fourth issue that haunts Vicky Chun. And given the news Tuesday that Mets owner Steve Cohen fired newly hired general manager Jared Porter because of inappropriate sexual behavior, her hiring experience with Brendan Faherty strikes one as especially poignant.
But first the uncertainty of 2021 and a COVID pandemic that has struck college athletics as hard as anything in history.
“I’m on plan like 102 in terms of trying to foresee what is going to happen,” Chun said. “I’m entering the year with cautious
hope. It has been so challenging for every athletic director, whether competing or not competing. Our profession is all about organization, teamwork, planning ahead, and that has been blown to bits. We just have to be ready to pivot for anything to happen.
“Mentally, it has just been brutal, because we’re just not able to do what we worked so hard to do. We have to be patient. I have to remind myself of the big picture, which I’m constantly being reminded of anyway by the news.”
More than 24 million Americans have had COVID; 400,000 have died. College athletics, its conferences, its schools, have headed every way since last March. The winter tournaments and spring were lost. The fall brought a myriad of scheduling decisions and protocols that continue. Uncertainty rules.
The Ivy League presidents have been out ahead each time in calling off spring, fall and winter sports. Everyone has an opinion on how college athletics should advance. No one can say the Ivy League presidents are wrong.
“I don’t envy anyone who has to make this decision,” Chun said. “Any decision like this is going to be controversial. I have faith they have access to the best minds in the world. They haven’t been proven wrong. It has gotten worse than where we were in the fall, and I think they predicted that.
“What I do know and appreciate is it isn’t based on whether they like athletics or not. President (Peter) Salovey comes to almost every game of our various sports. It’s certainly not financial. It’s strictly medical and statistics. I trust their decision. I support it. It’s just extremely difficult. If there is a school or a conference that has shown it has done it right, I think they would take it into consideration. There isn’t a direct path. Mentally, it’s horrible on all accounts. The one hope I do have is they say it will end. I hope sooner than later.”
At first, Chun thought maybe it was best to talk to the coaches when she knew something definite. What she learned, she said, is nothing has proved definite except for the horrible pandemic statistics. She decided the best way to communicate is to overcommunicate.
“During this pandemic, no one is happy,” Chun said. “No one is 100 percent doing it the right way. We’re in all different stages. It’s all over the place. The best thing I can do is be as transparent as possible. The feedback I’ve received, it is somewhat less stressful for them even to say I don’t have anything additional to tell you on a decision.
“It’s incredibly disappointing for the athletes’ season to be canceled, yet at the same time the feedback from them is it’s really difficult, maybe more difficult if they don’t have a decision. Then it’s week by week, month by month. We want to try to help them prepare, give them options. There isn’t really a great option, but at least there is one vs. just hoping in time it will get better. I do believe in the long run it will. But when this all came down and last spring was canceled, I really didn’t think it would affect the fall. When we left our offices, I thought I’d be gone for two weeks vs. six months.”
Prior to joining Yale University, Chun served for five years as the Vice President and Director of Athletics at Colgate University, where she had the distinction of being the first Asian American woman Athletic Director in NCAA Division I history.
“I’m driven to give the studentathletes the best experience possible,” Chun said. “I wanted to wait about six months to see what the feelings were from the coaches, the athletes, and then direct where we needed to go. What can I do to get to a better place competitively and what do they need surrounding their athletic and academic experiences? We were on with our capital projects, raising funds so it provides flexibility for our coaches.
“As we’re doing this, we had some scandals come into the picture. But it actually worked out because I could see the way we were organized that there was potential for some things to go wrong. I went back and did a whole strategic plan. Where were our weak spots and address those vs. coming in right away and saying this is my vision. I wanted my vision to be what we all wanted, the university and president. As long as we have that as the foundation whatever pops up, big or small, we’re able to deal with it because we know our ultimate goal. Trust the system. Trust we’ll get through it. And we have. We’ve gone through everything.”
Including the painful events of November 2019. With her first head coaching hire, Chun brought in Faherty to replace Meredith. In his first season, the women nearly made the NCAA playoffs. A month later, he had his contract terminated amid allegations of sexual misconduct with one player, a consensual sexual relationship with another player and drinking with players, all when he coached at New Haven a decade earlier.
“I think about it all the time,” Chun said. “There probably isn’t a week when I don’t. How could I, how could we, have foreseen this? I think about what we could have done differently. When we do our background checks, references, it just doesn’t catch everything. Is there anyone else we could have spoken to? We spoke to former players. We thought we did everything.
“It was such a perfect choice at that time. And we see the success we had very early on. When you make a hire, if you see such a fit, it’s so exciting. I’m 100 percent in. Now I enter every hire cautiously and ask the hard questions. If they deny it, if they lie to you, then they do. At least go into it more cautiously. The process was so clean and so important. It slipped through. How we found out was remarkable (through the student newspaper). I wish people (would) speak up sooner. It has made me change. (The misconduct) happened so long ago, but there were studentathletes that knew. What I did change was more communication with student-athletes and Yale athletics, even meaning confidential channels where they can speak without ramifications. I think that’s the best thing that came out of it.”
Chun pauses.
“But it still bothers me to this day,” she said.
Yale has a whopping 35 varsity sports, something folks don’t realize until the Olympics roll around. It is the ascension of Yale football, basketball, lacrosse and hockey that has brought the most attention.
“I’ve never been more challenged, but never been happier or proud,” Chun said. “We want to have the infrastructure in place to support our student-athletes. Whether your aspiration is CEO, Nobel Prize winner or professional athlete, we want to help you get there.”
The Falcons’ Foye Oluokun was one of the NFL’s best defensive players this season. The CEOs, Nobel Prize winners and U.S. presidents are too numerous to count.
After Chun, who played volleyball at Colgate, graduated, she was looking for an outlet. She found it in a boxing fitness class. So last semester she started a class a few nights a week, free for students, faculty and staff, outdoors with social distancing.
“I spoke to my instructors, and if I can help people out with fitness or release, I was going to do it during the pandemic,” said Chun, who’ll continue doing it this semester. “What I realized though, when the weather was awesome, they went running. I will still do it by myself. If people want to join in, great.”
When you’re a college AD these days, you’ve got to be prepared for anything.