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2013 Georgia State Football
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TH I S I S GEORG I A STATE FOOTBALL
CHERYL L. LEVICK
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 remark-
able under Levick. Each program has been
enhanced or in the case of football, built from
scratch – the program had one player, two
helmets and seven coaches when she arrived in
2009. Now it is set to compete at the FBS level
in just its fourth season. To make that jump in
schedule and talent, Levick hired Trent Miles
away from his alma mater in December 2012
after he constructed an impressive – if not
totally improbable – turnaround 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 revi-
talized Georgia State basketball with its first
postseason berth in a decade in his first year,
and now has Panther fans eagerly awaiting 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
position to compete for league titles right
off the bat as it fully moves into the Sun Belt
Conference in 2013-14. Last year, GSU squads
won two SBC team crowns to put the confer-
ence on notice that the Panthers are not just
A
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.
moving up, but they are ready to win from the
start.
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
championship. 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 administration
from Indiana. She has two daughters: Heather,
who is married to Michael Klass, and Melissa,
who will marry Jason Lake in August 2013.
THE LEVICK
FAMILY:
(from
left) Michael Klass,
Heather, Cheryl,
Melissa. Not
pictured, Jason Lake.
