By Jeff Hartsell
As new Citadel athletic director Larry Leckonby posed for pictures at Johnson Hagood Stadium on Friday afternoon, scaffolding on the nearly completed renovation on the home side loomed behind him.
"I should have brought my hard hat," Leckonby joked. "I've got one, and I'm ready to put it on and get this thing going."
The 51-year-old Leckonby was introduced by Citadel president Lt. Gen. John Rosa as the military school's new AD on Friday, taking over for the retiring Les Robinson. Leckonby, who was senior associate athletic director at Maryland for the last six years, starts work July 15 and is the man to take Citadel sports into a new era, Rosa said.
"With his experience in Division I athletics and strong financial background, Larry is equipped to take Citadel athletics to new heights," said Rosa, who chose Leckonby from a pool of three finalists.
Leckonby, only the fourth Citadel AD since 1957, will need that hard hat to fulfill Rosa's mandate of competitive and academic excellence while balancing the budget.
The renovation of the football stadium, begun by Robinson, is on track to be finished in August, school officials said. And the success of football coach Kevin Higgins' program - a 7-4 record last season was the Bulldogs' first winning mark since 1997 - has stoked anticipation for the 2008 season. With Higgins, baseball coach Fred Jordan and basketball coach Ed Conroy in place, the leadership for the school's three main sports seems set for the foreseeable future.
But Leckonby also faces challenges. The school projects a deficit of about $500,000 in the athletic department budget for 2008-09 (down from about $1.2 million for 2007-08), and sales of the new club seats at the football stadium have yet to surge as hoped.
The task of being competitive in the Southern Conference while breaking even on the bottom line is one reason why Rosa chose Leckonby, who also was chief financial officer at Maryland.
"What I've asked Larry to do is to take 30, 60, 90 days to really get a feel for the way our budget is organized, the way we are structured, and benchmark us against other Southern Conference schools," Rosa said. "And then we need to come together and figure out what are the things we are doing really well and what are the challenges and opportunities we have to meet.
"So it's going to be a busy, busy time for him."
Leckonby said he's ready to run his own shop for the first time in his career, which has taken him up the ladder in college sports from Boston University and Old Dominion to Boston College, Houston and Maryland.
"The Citadel is a challenging place," he said. "But Coach Robinson has a lot of good things in place. The stadium is going to be one of the top stadiums in Division I-AA, and it will be the first place where I haven't actually had to do it myself.
"But we'll look at every line item in the budget and see where we can maximize efficiencies, and then we'll flip our focus to the revenue side. I've got a list of eight or 10 categories that we ought to look at as a staff to make sure that we can generate additional revenues. Because I can promise you, expenses are going to go up."
One revenue stream that could be tapped is the new seating at Johnson Hagood. Seventeen of the 19 skybox suites have been sold, but only 39 percent of premium and standard club seats have been snapped up. That includes 67 percent of the $2,000 premium seats, but just 75 of 309 of the standard $1,500 seats (24 percent).
Leckonby, a 1979 graduate of Duke, did plenty of research on The Citadel before taking on those challenges. Maryland football coach Ralph Friedgen, a former Citadel assistant coach, has a couple of former Bulldog coaches on his staff, and Leckonby's former Maryland colleague, Joe Hull, is the AD at College of Charleston.
"They all told me that The Citadel is a small place, but the alums are very fierce and loyal, and the people there are great," said Leckonby, whose father Bill was a longtime football coach and AD at Lehigh.
"That's something I grew up with at Lehigh. So my wife, Cris, and I decided that if we were going to take a look at athletic director positions, it would be at a school like The Citadel. It's the right fit at the right time."
Reach Jeff Hartsell at jhartsell@postandcourier.com.
