The Butler athletics department has seen three of its associate athletic directors leave for other universities this school year.
Beth Goetz, associate athletic director for administration, announced last week she would be taking a position with the University of Minnesota.
Tom Crowley, former associate athletic director for internal operations, was named athletic director at Niagara University in October.
Bill Lynch, former associate athletic director for development, left in December to become DePauw’s new football coach.
The remaining athletics department employees have taken on additional duties this year.
“We have such a great team environment in the department that everybody has been more than willing to step up and take more responsibilities during that time just to make sure that we’re operating at the level we need to,” Goetz said.
Goetz said she has been handling the financial area of the athletics department.
“I’ve been working a little bit more on the financial side,” she said. “So working with the department budget, overseeing financial aid and those types of areas.”
Goetz will begin serving as an associate athletics director at Minnesota in March.
The athletic department hired a temporary staff member after Crowley left to help out with his former duties for the remainder of the academic year.
“The plan for that was to set up this interim plan that we’re currently operating under and to move toward a more permanent one as the spring rolled around, which,” Athletic Director Barry Collier said. “So, we’ll be solidifying that shortly.”
Mike Freeman, associate athletic director for external operations, has inherited Lynch’s responsibilities in the development area until someone is hired to the position full time.
“That was part of my position before we added an associate AD of development about two years ago,” Freeman said. “We’ve been able to pick it up here and there, but there’s no doubt there’s a lot of work to be done, and we’re still pitching in to get it all done.”
Collier said a new full-time associate athletic director for development would be hired within the next several weeks.
Freeman said having Goetz leave would not be any different for the athletics department to handle since two other associate athletic directors have already departed this school year.
“Since that’s so recent, Barry (Collier) is still trying to figure out exactly what direction we’re going to go in terms of getting everything done,” Freeman said. “We were already working under a situation where it’s all hands on deck to get the work done and make sure that student-athletes have a great experience and that we accomplish our goals.
“So I’m sure that it will just be more of the same in the interim before we can fill those positions.”
