Winthrop University announced Kelley Kish will serve as Interim Athletic Director following the resignation of Hank Harrawood, who had been the interim since August.
Kish was hired in February 2020 as Winthrop’s associate athletic director for business and finance after having served as director of athletics for over two years at Lake Erie College.
“Kelley has a wealth of collegiate administrative experience and has received praise in her time here for handling our internal operations, diversity efforts and our pandemic response, as well as being responsive to student-athlete concerns during trying times,” interim university president George Hynd said in a statement released on Oct. 15.
Hynd told The Johnsonian that Kish said she would be willing to be the interim for a year or a year and a half — “whatever that period of time is” — but that she did not see it as a career move.
“She took the position with the attitude of helping out Winthrop,” Hynd said. “I found that to be a very attractive attribute to her becoming the athletic director because I think she really has Winthrop and the best interest of Winthrop in her heart.”
Kish is just the second woman ever to lead Winthrop’s athletic department, following in the footsteps of Winthrop’s first athletic director Mary Roland Griffin, who was appointed in 1970 and helped oversee the integration of men’s sports teams at Winthrop.
“We believe everybody — regardless of race, gender orientation, gender, ethnic background — should all have an opportunity to move into leadership positions, so I was delighted that we were able to put Kelley in that position,” Hynd said.
Kish takes the reins from Hank Harrawood, who resigned in early October after only having served as interim athletic director for roughly two months. According to Hynd, Harrawood had expressed an interest in being the full-time athletic director prior to his resignation.
“There were some conversations that never came to fruition. The original intent was for this to be an interim position for like I say, a year, 18 months or so.
“There was an opportunity to consider appointing him as the AD, but in conversations with the Board of Trustees, and certainly it was my decision, we decided to stick with the original gameplan, which was to keep this as an interim position for a period of time.”
Hyd said Harrawood had already been offered a position in the private sector, so he ultimately made the decision to accept a new opportunity rather than continue to serve as interim. Hynd said that money was not a factor in the two sides failing to reach a long-term deal.
“There were no disagreements over possible salary or anything like that,” Hynd said. “The question really was whether or not to appoint him as the athletic director without going through a search.
“I think Hank is a wonderful guy, extremely well qualified, but in the final analysis, I really wanted to keep the position as interim until the new president gets here.”
Hynd said a new university president should be in place by July 1, 2022.
Hynd also said Kish was not the first person he reached out to about potentially taking over as interim once he knew Harrawood was strongly considering moving on from Winthrop.
“I had already contacted some other people to see if they might be willing to step in as interim because I knew that Hank was likely going to take this other position,” Hynd said. “They both had mentioned Kelley Kish — they knew Kelley Kish — and they said ‘ya know, you really should be talking to Kelley.’
“Kelley was on my call list, so after talking to those other individuals, I called up Kelley and had a conversation with her.”
After a handful of departures from Winthrop Athletics over the last six months or so, Kish said her experience makes her the right person for the job right now.
“When I went to Lake Erie College where I was the AD, there were a lot of things that I kind of had to shore up and put into place, so there’s a lot of experience that I have on setting the direction and the goals and the vision of a department and also getting it all done structurally behind the scenes,” Kish said.
“That’s really what we need to rely on right now, is that ability that I bring to the table to partner with everyone in our department and across campus to really set the infrastructure that we need to be successful and to align with the university mission.”
As associate athletic director, Kish also held the designation of Senior Woman Administrator (SWA). She said while some women who are athletic directors also choose to represent their departments as the SWA, she plans to take the alternative option and designate someone else in the department for the role.
Kish said since assuming her new position as interim AD, she has given the most thought to the department’s staffing model, which currently has numerous vacancies. She said she hopes to announce some staffing models as soon as Nov. 1.
“There’s a lot of layers to it because I want to set the future permanent AD up for success,” Kish said. “You have to think about ‘what does that look like,’ as well as have an opportunity that I have a place to land whenever the decision is made by the new president on the permanent AD.”
Kish said it is way too early to know whether she’ll be interested in becoming the permanent athletic director once the job is listed. She said it will really depend on the presidential hire.
“As a good leader of this department and as a great member of the institutional and Eagle family, you need to know [the thoughts of] your ultimate boss and the leader of the institution — how do they view athletics and that role?”
