By Justin Stearns, Staff Writer
19 National Championships, 78 individual National Titles, this is Lindsey Wilson College Athletics.
In a recent interview, Willis Pooler, the Athletic Director here at LWC, talked about the state of Lindsey Wilson Athletics. He discussed where he thinks the institution is now, where they have been, and what he sees for the future of Lindsey Athletics.
Willis Pooler is now in his 20th year of being the Athletic Director here at Lindsey Wilson. According to his bio on Lindsey’s athletics website, Pooler has been selected as the Mid South Conference Athletic Director of the year five times.
Along with this, in 2020-21, Pooler led Lindsey Wilson to a ninth-consecutive Mid-South Conference Presidents Cup, which is awarded to the school with the best all-around athletics.
Just to add to the list of accomplishments, Pooler conducted the schools athletics program to quite possibly their most successful season in 2015-16, as Lindsey nabbed the Learfield Sports Directors Cup, which is given to the nations top NAIA athletic program.
Pooler believes that the overall state of athletics here at LWC is in a good place.
“I do believe our competition is getting stronger every year.”
“I do believe our competition is getting stronger every year,” Pooler said, “I believe the high bar we’ve set has been a catalyst in helping others do better.”
Part of what allows LWC to have a strong athletics presence is the percentage of student athletes that make up the student body.
Pooler stated that “student athletes consistently make up 65-70% of the residential student population,” and that over the last 10 years that number has “remained fairly consistent.”
His reason given for that number remaining fairly consistent over time, is that in the last ten years, the only sport added has been archery. Pooler stated that archery had brought in around 30-40 new students, so that number has remained fairly similar.
A few hot-button topics that I felt compelled to ask Pooler was if there were any plans to add any sort of new facilities or perhaps a meal plan for the athletes on campus.
On the matter of new facilities, Pooler replied, “We are currently working on a master facilities plan to add new facilities and improve existing facilities. There are several things I would like to do.”
Within the last year already, the turf on the football field has been completely replaced, and the track was resurfaced with completely new lines painted on.
Many student athletes have been interested in and have expressed a want, and perhaps a need for some sort of nutritionist or meal plan. When asked, Pooler's response was a firm “no”, and did not comment further.
Another small, yet important detail that is just another part of building the athletics here at Lindsey Wilson, is the Lindsey Wilson Athletics webpage.
The webpage is easy to navigate, as you can find any information about any sport on campus. There is even a section dedicated to the new and complex world of Name, Image, Likeness, where student-athletes can profit off their image through advertising, social media, etc. It is nice to see that Lindsey is actively showing that they support and care about their student-athletes.
Not only is the website useful and practical, it is also aesthetically pleasing, which is not something you would expect from an NAIA program.
All of the aforementioned information can be found at the following link https://www.lwcathletics.com/index.php.
As with anything, there is always room for improvement. Although Lindsey Wilson Athletics are growing and successful, Willis Pooler and the rest of the faculty and staff are continuing to work to build LWC Athletics into something that everyone anywhere will want to be a part of.
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