After five years at the helm of Winthrop Athletics, former athletic director Dr. Ken Halpin has departed Rock Hill and will serve as deputy athletic director and chief operating officer at Purdue University.
The announcement came in July, and Halpin has since begun his job with the Boilermakers, which he described as an opportunity he “couldn’t say no to.”
“It was going to have to be something really special to leave Winthrop,” Halpin said. “If you look at what was presented at Purdue, it is not just a national but an internationally recognizable and leading brand in higher [education].
“The status of the institution was very significant, and then the opportunity to be a deputy AD at a Power 5 institution, and to come and to truly get an opportunity to lead at the highest level in a deputy AD role was very significant.
“And the opportunity to come and work under an athletics director (Mike Bobinski) who has successfully been an AD at almost literally every level… if you kind of couch all those three things together, it was really a spectacular new learning opportunity at a level that I think very few people get an opportunity to be a part of.”
During his time at Winthrop, Halpin oversaw the hiring of many new head coaches, and he said that their success is one of the things he is most proud of from his time in Rock Hill.
“We had new coaches in softball, lacrosse [and] volleyball, all who competed in a conference championship title opportunity within their first two years,” Halpin said. “That was kind of a big part of it — maintaining and growing Winthrop’s championship commitment and then with that, really establishing ourselves as leaders in a lot of key important areas including diversity and inclusion.”
Halpin assured that this decision was a difficult one and that his choice to go to Purdue was in no way based on a desire to leave Winthrop.
“We loved it there. We weren’t running away from anything,” Halpin said. “This was an opportunity that very few people in our industry get a chance at. If this opportunity became real, I was going to pursue it one hundred percent because of the opportunity, not because of anything that had to do with Rock Hill or Winthrop.”
Halpin said that it is “the little things” that he will miss the most about Winthrop and living in Rock Hill.
“It’s meeting up with my friends and fellow community leaders at 7:30 a.m. at Knowledge Perk on a Tuesday to catch up and talk about all of the things that are coming to town and the different initiatives that people are pulling together… It’s getting to see the kids that I got to help recruit to the Coliseum get a chance to get back and compete. It’s the fans in the Coliseum losing their minds when the lights go out for the basketball intros. It’s all of those things.”
In conjunction with Halpin’s departure, Hank Harrawood has been named interim athletic director. Harrawood previously served as Winthrop’s deputy athletic director for intercollegiate activities.
“I learned a lot about patience from him (Halpin),” Harrawood said. “I’ve tended in my past professionally to be an info gatherer and a decision-maker. He really taught me a lot about taking another day or two — when patience can be a great thing.”
Harrawood said he already has a vast knowledge of Winthrop’s athletic department, for which he credits Halpin allowing him to have his hand on so much as the deputy AD.
“Ken let me do a lot, and I was lucky in that regard,” Harrawood said. “He let me take control of a lot of areas of our athletics department. He let me really kind of have my hands on and get my arms around what the day-to-day in the athletic department looks like: what’s required, managing people, managing our building. He let me do a lot of that, which I was really thankful for.”
As fall sports take off, Harrawood is focused on providing an excellent student-athlete experience by making sure students know who and where their resources are. One other priority for Harrawood is stabilizing the department’s budget and staff.
“We’re not in bad situations with either of those things; we just need to stabilize for future planning and future growth,” Harrawood said.
Winthrop Athletics is coming off a fiscal year that saw limited ticket sales and revenue due to COVID-19, and the department has staff vacancies to fill, including the assistant athletic director for the compliance position that was previously held by Valerie Kerr.
