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2013-14 GSU Men’s Basketball
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THI S I S GEORGI A STATE MEN’ S BASKETBALL
D I RECTOR OF ATHLET I CS
As Georgia State’s Director of Athletics,
Levick has helped boost the Panthers’ visibility
on the national stage in multiple sports while
adhering to the athletic department’s mission
statement of shaping champions for today and
leaders for tomorrow.
The transformation of the Panther
Athletics Department has been remarkable.
Each program has been enhanced or in the
case of football, built from scratch. Now it
competes at the FBS level. To make that jump,
Levick hired Trent Miles away from his alma
mater in December 2012 after he constructed
an impressive – if not improbable – turn-
around at Indiana State.
Miles was not the first high-level coaching
hire Levick successfully maneuvered for the
Panthers as she also plucked Ron Hunter out of
the state of Indiana in 2011. He quickly revital-
ized Georgia State basketball with its first post-
season berth in a decade in his first year, and
now has the Panthers picked among the Sun
Belt leaders prior to the 2013-14 campaign.
The significant imprint Levick has created
at GSU can be seen across the entire athletic
department. She has put Georgia State in posi-
tion to compete for Sun Belt Conference titles
in 2013-14. Last year, GSU squads won two
SBC team crowns to put the conference on
notice that the Panthers are not just moving
up, but they are ready to win from the start.
Her leadership is evident to her peers, who
have chosen her to serve in key positions on
the Executive Committee of the Division IA
Athletic Director’s Association and Sun Belt’s
highly respected administrator with over two decades of experience
guiding programs to the highest level of NCAA play, Cheryl L. Levick
has successfully combined athletic and educational opportunities
for students since the start of her career in collegiate athletics.
Football Committee.
Levick’s tenure in sport-crazy Atlanta
has been marked by significant upgrades in
facilities and fundraising. Annual giving to
the Panther Athletic Club (PAC) has steadily
increased by more than tenfold, and the three
largest gifts in the history of GSU athletics
have been secured. Construction projects have
included the GSU Football Practice Complex,
new facilities for strength and conditioning
and sports medicine, and upgrades to every
venue used by the Panthers.
Arguably the most impressive project to
date is the state-of-the-art facility for sand
volleyball, the Panthers’ most recent sport addi-
tion. It was finished in time for the inaugural
season in 2013, and is part of the ambitious
Athletics Master Facilities Plan that Levick
developed to address needs for every sport.
Continuous success has been seen in the
classroom as Georgia State student-athletes
have excelled in recent years. Together, Panther
student-athletes have recorded a cumulative
grade-point average above 3.0 for 10 consecu-
tive semesters while completing more than
5,000 hours of community service annually.
Levick has been a significant proponent of
providing opportunities for women in college
sports. She started the Women, Sports and
Power Luncheon to raise money for women’s
sports by female donors, an event that has
been successful at each of her previous stops
as athletic director. The event helped raise
$50,000 for GSU women’s teams in 2013.
In 2011, Levick was named a “Game
Changer” among women in sports business by
the SportsBusiness Journal, and she was twice
(1998 and 1999) named one of the nation’s
Top 25 Female Sports Executives by Street &
Smith’s SportsBusiness Journal. The National
Association of Collegiate Women Athletic
Administrators (NACWAA) also named her
Division I Athletic Administrator of the Year
in 2001.
Levick came to Georgia State from
Maryland, where she served as chief of staff/
executive senior athletic director while over-
seeing the day-to-day management of the
27-sport program. That came after serving
three years (2004-07) as director of athletics at
Saint Louis, where she led the Billikens’ transi-
tion to the Atlantic 10 Conference and was the
lead fundraiser for an $80 million on-campus
arena and practice complex.
In four years (2000-04) as director of
athletics and recreation at Santa Clara, Levick
oversaw a major renovation of the school’s
basketball arena and saw the Broncos’ women’s
soccer team capture the 2001 national champi-
onship. It is still the only NCAA team title in
school history.
Levick spent 12 years at Stanford as senior
associate athletic director and senior woman
administrator. She was the primary admin-
istrator for 33 varsity programs that won 44
national championships and helped Stanford
to six straight Sears Cup titles. She also served
as assistant commissioner of the Pac-10
Conference, assistant director of communi-
cations and women’s programs at the NCAA,
women’s gymnastics coach and associate
athletic director at Slippery Rock, and assis-
tant gymnastics coach and synchronized swim
coach at Indiana. Levick began her career at
Pattonville Senior High School in St. Louis,
Mo., coaching gymnastics and women’s track.
Levick is a 1974 graduate of Missouri, and
holds a master’s degree in athletic adminis-
tration from Indiana. She has two daughters:
Heather and husband Michael Klass with
grandson Brady born in July 2013; and Melissa
and husband Jason Lake.
THE LEVICK
FAMILY:
(from
left) Michael Klass,
Heather, Melissa,
Jason Lake, Cheryl
