catmandoo
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Member # 1284
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posted 07-24-2014 08:51 AM
It's good to know all our coachs are doing it the right way.
Rachel Baker has spent the last year as senior associate athletics director for compliance at the University of Kentucky after working 13 years at the NCAA, including the final three when she was the managing director for development and investigations and oversaw a staff of 35 investigators.
She spoke at the Ohio UK Convention last weekend and shared how student-athletes often ask her how she will ever know if they break rules.
“First, they put it on the internet. They post what they are doing on Twitter and Facebook,” Baker said. “We talk all the time about there is a certain way we want our athletes to carry themselves. We are teaching them to have integrity at all times.
“When I was at the NCAA, some of my best sources were ex-girlfriends. I talked to a lot of upperclassmen who were not playing because a freshman got their spot. I talked a lot to assistant coaches who got fired or were no longer coaches. It’s not as hard to get information sometimes as athletes wants to believe.”
But Baker wants UK athletes to understand she is there to help them.
“I told the athletes last year when I got to UK that I don’t have a tail, I don’t have horns and I am not breathing fire,” she laughed and said.
She joked that she often gets asked how she gets along with basketball coach John Calipari, who blasted the NCAA in his recent book. However, she said Calipari, football coach Mark Stoops and women’s basketball coach Matthew Mitchell and their staffs are all “very conscientious” about following rules.
“Their staffs do not make a move without going through us first,” Baker said. “They all understand what is at stake. They do not want to do anything to jeopardize their programs or the student-athletes. You should feel good about the coaches because we feel good about that and their approach to compliance.”
Baker said despite what many believe, she didn’t have a “list of sacred cows” at the NCAA — schools or coaches that were not to be investigated.
“No one ever came to me and said you can’t touch these schools or coaches,” she said.
She also said every sport has a responsibility to be compliant.
“It hurts every program on campus when one sport gets in trouble because it gets used against you in recruiting,” Baker, a Berea native who played basketball and coached at Berea College, said. “That’s why we are just as vigilant with golf or soccer as we are with men’s basketball or football.
“It’s a god thing for us to self report secondary violations. That means we have systems in place to monitor things and coaches are coming forward to report violations and we have a system in place for them to do that. That’s a good thing, not a bad thing.”
She says the “best part of my career has been my time” at Kentucky and she enjoys working with coaches and student-athletes.
“Regardless of how much we do, I feel good about what I know about our coaches and student-athletes. We are everywhere. At camps, at games, at ticket distribution. What worries most is what I don’t know. You don’t get a pass (from the NCAA) because you don’t know something that is going on, but at Kentucky I really feel good about what we know and what our coaches and student-athletes know,” she said.
Link
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http://www.ukfightsong.com/
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