June 11, 2004
Cleveland, Ohio –The Officers and Executive Committee of the National Association of Athletic Development Directors (NAADD) have selected their award recipients for the 2003-04 year.
Award recipients include Russ Gardiner of Sonoma State University as the Volunteer of the Year; Dirk Katstra of the University of Virginia as the Fund Raiser of the Year; James Duratz of the University of Pittsburgh as the University Division Donor of the Year; Mildred White of South Dakota State University as the College Division Donor of the Year; and George Bennett of Clemson University and John Kates of Stanford University as recipients of the Lifetime Achievement Awards. Additionally, Jenilee Garner of the University of Florida received the NAADD Postgraduate Scholarship.
Bennett has served three extended terms on the Clemson University campus. As an undergraduate student, Bennett instituted the firing of the cannon after Clemson touchdowns during football games, a tradition that lives on 50 years later. He returned to Tiger athletics in the 1960s as an alumni field officer, later moving on to become assistant athletics director for business and then executive director of IPTAY. His leadership led to a doubling of IPTAY contributions and an increase in membership. His third term, which began in 1993, again as executive director of IPTAY, Bennett created two additional components, an endowment program and the Tiger Cub program. Although he is retiring this month, Bennett’s service to the Clemson community will remain memorialized in an endowment that has been created in his name. His extensive efforts were rewarded in 1984 when Bennett was named National Athletics Fund Raiser of the Year and again in 2001 with the Order of the Palmetto, South Carolina’s highest civilian award. He was inducted into Clemson’s Athletics Hall of Fame and received the university’s Alumni Association Distinguished Service Award.
Award winners will be recognized at NAADD’s 11th Annual Workshop, June 11-14 at the Wyndham Anatole Hotel in Dallas, Texas at the Academy Directors’ Cup Awards Luncheon on Sunday, June 13.
NAADD is the first organization of its kind to provide educational and networking opportunities, enhancement of acceptable operating standards and ethics, and establishment of the overall prestige and understanding of the profession of athletics development and fund raising.
NAADD is administered by NACDA, which is now in its 39th year. NACDA serves as the professional and educational association for more than 6,100 college athletics directors, associates, assistants and conference commissioners at more than 1,600 institutions throughout the United States, Mexico and Canada. Through its series of management seminars, clinics and workshops and publication of the bi-monthly magazine Athletics Administration, NACDA offers educational opportunities to its members. More than 1,200 athletics administrators annually attend the NACDA Convention. Additionally, the Association operates the United States Sports Academy Directors’ Cup program, which honors the all-sports champion in each of the NCAA Divisions — I, II, III — and the NAIA, for a total of four trophies.
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