HANOVER — After more than a decade at Dartmouth College, Harry Sheehy will retire from his role as the Big Green’s athletic director this month, leaving big shoes to fill and uncomfortable questions to answer.
The 68-year-old helped Dartmouth stay competitive in the Ivy League facilities race, unveiling the largest permanent indoor practice facility in the league this past spring. He was a strong fundraiser, too, leading the charge to have 14 coaching positions endowed.
Yet his retirement was announced unceremoniously on Tuesday, coming 11 days after the reinstatement of five varsity sports to comply with Title IX gender equity rules. His successor will have to deal with whatever the multiple reviews unveil about the department’s failures.
Peter Roby, a Dartmouth graduate and former Northeastern athletic director, will take the reins as interim director of athletics until June 2022.
How alluring the job may be is up for debate. Taking over a department reeling from controversy with a president who’s voiced limited support for athletics doesn’t help. Plus, the job pool shrinks when asking qualified candidates to move to Hanover.
Here are some names to keep an eye on throughout the hiring process:
The dream candidate for the Big Green will be Brian Mann. A two-time Dartmouth graduate — he earned his bachelor’s degree in history in 2002 and a master’s degree in liberal studies in 2013 — he played quarterback and set the school record for passing yards in a season with 2,913 in 2002. He’s currently the associate athletic director for development and chief development officer for University of California athletics.
Prior to his time in Berkeley, Calif., he spent four years at Rice, where he served in a variety of fundraising roles. He is still loved around Hanover, but it feels like luring him away from a Pac-12 school, where he might already be on his way to a big-time athletic director job, will be a tough ask.
Lafeyette athletic director Sherryta Freeman, a Dartmouth alumna, has vast experience in the world of Division I athletics. Her first job out of college was as a public information assistant in the Ivy League office before serving as the assistant AD for compliance at her alma mater from January 2004 to August 2005. She’s spent time as a senior administrator at Penn and Temple, too.
Maybe most important, she knows what winning looks like at Dartmouth, since she was a member of two Ivy League women’s basketball championship teams that secured NCAA tournament appearances in 1999 and 2000.
If Roby impresses in his year on the job, he could also be in the running. Just bringing him in shows that Dartmouth has interest. Along with his stint at Northeastern, he was vice president of U.S. marketing at Reebok and served six seasons as head men’s basketball coach at Harvard.
Trinity College athletic director Drew Galbraith spent 14 years in the Dartmouth athletic department before assuming his current role in October 2017. A graduate of the College of William and Mary, he knows the academic rigors athletes face from his own experience.
During his time with the Big Green, he worked as the senior associate director of athletics and executive director of Dartmouth Peak Performance. In 2019-20, he set records at Trinity for annual giving, new alumni donors and total athletic donors.
Former Olympic gold medalist Betsy Mitchell has been California Institute of Technology’s athletic director since 2011. Her first coaching job was in Hanover, serving as the Big Green’s women’s swimming coach from 1990-96. Before landing at Caltech, she served as director of athletics at Laurel School for Girls in Shaker Heights, Ohio, and Allegheny College in Pennsylvania.
Laurel Richie has the experience and Big Green connection to excel at the Ivy League institution. From 2011-15, she was the WNBA’s president, leading the league’s business, operations and marketing initiatives and was the first person of color to lead a major national sports league. Now, she’s the chairman of Dartmouth’s Board of Trustees and a leadership consultant to Fortune 100 executive-level managers at Merryck & Co. She holds a bachelor’s degree in policy studies from Dartmouth.
If Dartmouth wants to poach a sitting D-I athletic director, UMass Amherst’s Ryan Bamford is worth considering. His father, Steve Bamford, is the former AD at Plymouth State. Ryan has worked in athletic departments at Plymouth, UNH, Yale and Georgia Tech before taking the gig at UMass in March 2015.
The Big Green opted to go the D-III route when hiring Sheehy. Wellesley College director of athletics Bethany Ellis is a Yale grad and former women’s basketball player who spent five years working at Boston University. During her time with the Terriers, she served as senior associate director of athletics for student athlete development.
Dartmouth football coach Buddy Teevens has always been rumored to be interested in the job. With more than 20 years of experience leading the Big Green on the gridiron, he also has had stints at Tulane and Stanford. Other schools across the country have promoted football coaches to athletic directors, such as Barry Alvarez at Wisconsin.
Pete Nakos can be reached at pnakos@vnews.com.