Seymour settles into Huskies interim AD job

By Doug McConachie SP Sports Editor

Bill Seymour was all smiles Tuesday.

He was hoping his attitude would not only be noticed, but also spread rampantly through Huskie Athletics like wildfire.

The new acting-director of Huskie Athletics, in his first day on the job, had one message to get through to his support staff and his sports teams. “This is going to be a happy place,” he said, with heavy emphasis on happy.

How it will happen has yet to be worked out, but the veteran Saskatoon teacher and coach, who has a 10-month interim position at the University of Saskatchewan, says it will be accomplished. It will likely be the coaches and the players and the university personnel who come up with most of the answers.

Despite speculation that some of the programs’ futures are under review, Seymour says that’s not his role to get involved in those decisions. There’s the re-dedication of Griffith’s Stadium Sept. 2, when the U of S Huskies face the Alberta Golden Bears in the football season kickoff, and that’s the first priority.

If there are reviews to be done, “it will be by people higher than me . . . (president) Peter Mackinnon and Carol Rodgers (college of kinesiology).”

Budgets have already been set for the coming year for the various sports and financial concerns are the worry of others within the university. “My job is to get everybody together on the same page,” said Seymour.

“We’ve got a great program and great athletes and I want to make this an enjoyable year.”

Seymour, a graduate of the U of S, has been heavily involved in hockey, football, cross-country and track and field at both the university and school levels and is a former coach of the Huskie men’s hockey team. He’s also been involved in writing a book on the history of men’s university hockey.

“I don’t have any great solutions (now),” Seymour said after spending the entire day meeting with his support staff, “but I want to pull people together. I want to get this dog sled going in the same direction.”

Seymour replaces Ross Wilson and says, while it’s going to take time to get people on the same page, “we” will do it. Coaches become protective of their own programs understandably, but Seymour says he will sit down with them both individually and collectively. “I know coaches have some of the answers. . . they’re pretty creative.”

There will be regular coaches’ meetings, some formal, some informal, but Seymour also says he wants to talk with players about how to make the Huskie program the best it can be.

Come next summer, when his term is finished, Seymour admits he might have some thoughts to pass on to the powers-that-be about Huskie Athletics, but this year is about making what is already in place work.

And as to the future and whether Seymour would be interested in continuing as athletic director, that’s a subject to be discussed next year.

“We’re in a transition stage, this is a temporary position, and (now) I’m running it for just one year.”

dmcconachie@sp.canwest.com