By Joel Weckerly, Sports Editor
When Shanon Hays announced his resignation as ACU’s director of athletics to coach basketball at Midland College last April, there was the initial surprise from Vice President Gary McCaleb. After all, McCaleb, who oversaw school athletics, had helped bring in the 35-year-old Hays less than a year before.
“I was really surprised,” McCaleb said. “I thought we had that [position] taken care of for quite some time. Before we hired him, we had talked about if he was ready to give up coaching. He said he was, but he didn’t know he would miss it as much as he did.”
McCaleb and ACU President Royce Money now faced a decision: hire a new athletic director or restructure the system. They chose the latter, and in early July Money named McCaleb Chief Athletics Administrator and named former assistant director of athletics Jared Mosley Associate Athletics Director of Operations.
The change splits athletic director responsibilities between McCaleb and Mosley; McCaleb will handle long-term planning, fund raising and hiring of employees, while Mosley will take care of day-to-day duties like operations, NCAA compliance, event management and budgeting.
“We saw that Jared was already doing such a great job, and we thought we could expand his area further,” McCaleb said of the move. “One reason we were able to do this is that we have such a good overall staff in the athletic department.”
He also said that he really isn’t adding much more to his plate. “People weren’t really aware that I had this much duty in athletics. I still had responsibility for the bigger picture of athletics; it just wasn’t formal.”
Mosley said he was happy about the decision, which will allow him to become more familiar with athletics fund raising and other aspects of the job he hadn’t yet handled.
“I think it’s a great move,” said Mosley, a former standout on the Wildcat basketball team. “It’s a great opportunity for me to be able to tap into [McCaleb’s] expertise and slowly learn some fund-raising techniques.”
McCaleb said he didn’t know how long-term the new system would be.
“We didn’t set a time,” he said. “We’re just going to see how this works. “We’ll go through the year like this and take another look at it next summer. We’ll evaluate it and see how it worked.”
