Dartmouth College Athletic Director Harry Sheehy will retire this month, school president Phil Hanlon announced in an email to the school donors and alumni Tuesday morning.
The news comes less than two weeks after Dartmouth announced it would be reinstating the five athletic programs that were cut last summer due to failing to be Title IX compliant.
Sheehy was in the midst of his 11th season as AD, having been named to the position in September of 2010.
“Harry Sheehy, Dartmouth’s director of athletics and recreation, will be retiring this month after more than a decade of service to our community of scholar-athletes,” Hanlon wrote in the email.
BREAKING: Athletics director Harry Sheehy will retire this month after more than 10 years leading the department. His retirement comes following months of controversy relating to the elimination and then reinstatement of five athletic teams. Story to come.
— The Dartmouth (@thedartmouth) February 9, 2021
Peter Roby, the former athletic director of Northeastern University, will take over as the interim AD on Feb. 16, and will serve through June 2022. Roby is a Dartmouth alumnus and previously served as the school’s assistant basketball coach.
Sheehy has been under heavy criticism ever since the school announced its decision to cut the five varsity teams, including men’s and women’s swimming & diving, in July.
Shortly following the announcement he did a Q&A on Dartmouth’s website addressing the reasons for the cuts, coming out with some controversial quotes that included referring to teams with fewer resources as “second-class citizens.”
After the school’s women’s swimming & diving and golf teams threatened the school with a lawsuit over a Title IX violation, Dartmouth announced the reinstatement of all five programs that were cut in late January.
In a statement issued by President Hanlon following the teams being reinstated, he says that Sheehy and his team “established a series of factors and considerations to be used in their assessment” in deciding which teams should be cut, and that the school later learned “elements of the data that Athletics used to confirm continued Title IX compliance may not have been complete.”
A similar situation occurred at the College of William & Mary, where athletic director Samantha Huge resigned one month after cutting seven sports, including both swimming & diving programs. Two weeks after Huge’s resignation, the three women’s programs cut were reinstated due to lack of Title IX compliance, and two weeks after that, the school announced the men’s programs would be revived as well.
Dartmouth produced 27 Ivy League champions and three national championship teams during Sheehy’s tenure.
About time. I’ve been consistently saying that any AD that axes any program has failed and should be nixed. Eastern Michigan should be next
I think you mean Michigan State University
I don’t think he does.
Well then let me say the MSU AD needs to see this same fate for cutting the Swim & Dive teams. He needs to be held accountable. His day in court is coming and it will uncover creative accounting practices.
Both EMU and MSU
Karma Is a real b isn’t it?
Good effing riddance.
Let that serve as an example to other “elite”, overpaid and out of touch administrators… cut programs = lose your job!
Maybe Eastern Michigan’s AD will follow his trend.
It never fails to amaze me how many people are employed in Title IX compliance and universities continue to fail in basic understanding and execution of the rules. Even the simple act of counting seems difficult for them.
As he should
We did it Patrick! We saved the city!