On Tuesday Bill Popp, the Reinhardt Athletic Director and Head Baseball Coach, visited our class and told us all about his career and how he got to be the Athletic Director at Reinhardt. He went to West Georgia College where he played baseball for 3 years before transferring to Kennesaw State University. He received his Bachelor's Degree from KSU and then went to Oglethorpe where he was a volunteer baseball coach. He was called up as the head coach the following year and kept that job for 11 years. He then came here to Reinhardt where he started the baseball program in 2004. The school has gotten a lot bigger since then and added a number of other sports: Softball, Men's Lacrosse and Women's Lacrosse.
There are currently about 240+ athletes that attend Reinhardt.Reinhardt went from NJCAA to the NAIA to be included with the other 290 teams in the NAIA.Reinhardt also recently went from the SSAC to the AAC. He also told us how our men's soccer team had 3/4 of the total ejections last year of all men's soccer teams in the NAIA. Our conference is currently searching for more teams to add to the AAC. At Reinhardt they are looking at adding a few programs as well: Football and maybe Track.
Popp told us that a lot of what his duties are as the Athletic Director include the eligibility process for all athletes, as well as a list of criteria that each student needs to meet. I asked him what was one of the main reasons that Reinhardt changed conferences and he said that one of the main ones was the amount of money that we were getting for scholarships as compared to the amount that the other schools in our conference were getting. Another reason was that it was one of our program and school goals to match our playing field with those in the AAC.
I found this speech to be particularly interesting because I could see myself traveling down a similar road later on in my future.
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