The Georgia Military College athletic department is hoping to bring a women’s junior college basketball program to Milledgeville two years from now.
Two weeks ago GMC announced the start of a campaign aimed at raising $100,000 by June 1, 2018 to offset the cost of starting the program. If the goal is met by the target date, recruiting for the first GMC women’s basketball team will begin during the 2018-19 school year and the team will start competing during 2019-20. GMC Athletic Director Bert Williams said the June 2018 target date is not solidified, so the program start date can be pushed if need be.
“I’m very confident we’ll meet that goal,” Williams said of the initial target date. “I would bet my house we’ll meet it by the second year. So worst case scenario there will be a year delay from what we’re working on, but really I almost hesitate to even say that because I really feel good about getting this support behind us and moving forward with this. It would be good for the student-athletes, it would be good for the institution, and I think it would be good for the community too to bring in these young ladies and have this program. It’ll certainly enhance our campus environment as well.”
Williams added that the GMC Athletic Department has been “flush” with student-athletes for the past three years at right around 220 students participating in at least one sport.
“That fully outfits the programs we currently have, so we look institutionally at what makes sense for our students and their expressed interest,” he said. “We look for what the best opportunities to meet those interests are in regards to programs. We look at competitive opportunities either in our conference or in the region. We started doing some budgeting for potential programs probably about four years ago looking strategically down the road at which athletic programs made the most sense here.”
Title IX also played a part in GMC electing to add women’s basketball. Currently football, softball, men’s and women’s soccer, men’s and women’s cross country, men’s golf and riflery (co-ed) are all offered at the Milledgeville campus. There is a three-prong test used to determine whether or not an athletic department can be considered within compliance of Title IX and only one must be met. One is that the number of male and female athletes is proportionate to their respective enrollments. Any college with a football program, like GMC, usually has trouble meeting this prong. Another is that an institution must show a history and continuing practice of expanding participation opportunities to the underrepresented sex. With the proposed addition of women’s basketball and women’s golf currently being recruited, GMC is showing such a practice. Williams said when he came on as athletic director and head football coach 16 years ago that football was really the only opportunity the school offered.
“This (adding women’s basketball) would be another step in our long history of adding all these sports and opportunities for our female athletes,” he said. “We have focused on adding women’s opportunities for those reasons. But you look at the whole thing and you don’t do it just because you have to, you do it because it’s the right thing to do. You do it because it improves the campus environment. You do it because it’s going to make a difference with the young women that are coming into this program and becoming part of Georgia Military College athletics. We really feel strongly that both of these programs will be a great add to what we do here at Georgia Military and provide some good opportunities for these young women.”
If the addition of women’s basketball pans out, the athletic director said the team will play in the Cordell Events Center along with GMC Prep’s middle school through varsity boys and girls programs. The new team would compete as part of the Georgia Collegiate Athletic Association (GCAA) and be the eighth team in GCAA Division I along with schools like Central Georgia Tech, Andrew College and East Georgia. The search for a coach not begin until the fundraising goal is met, though Williams knows what he will look for.
“To me finding the right coach to do this is more about feel,” Williams said. “Chemistry, competency and character are the three things that I tend to look for. … They’ve got to know the game of basketball and be able to impart that knowledge. The reality is, are we going to get somebody who has been a head coach for five to 10 years? Probably not, but we might. You never know. We’ve brought in some really good coaches over the years because we have a compelling environment to work in here at Georgia Military College.”
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