MIDDLETOWN, Conn. - Wesleyan Director of Athletics Mike Whalen '83 has been named as a 2024-25 Athletics Director of the Year by the National Association of Collegiate Directors of Athletics (NACDA), as announced by the association on Monday morning. Whalen earns the highest individual honor in the profession for the first time in his career.
Whalen is the eighth NESCAC Athletic Director to be recognized with the NACDA honor since 1998-99. At the helm of the Wesleyan University athletics program since 2012, Whalen, in his 15th year at Wesleyan and his 41st in collegiate athletics.
Since his arrival in 2010 as head football coach and associate athletics director, Whalen has built upon Wesleyan's long-standing tradition of scholar-athlete excellence by orchestrating one of the NESCAC's most assertive football program overhauls, building and upgrading department facilities, engaging with donors, and restructuring the department's fundraising programs to help Wesleyan keep up in the now fast-paced world of Division III athletics.
While building on Wesleyan's athletic and academic excellence is paramount, Whalen has also incorporated progressive ideas in external relations. Initiatives such as the Athletic Mentoring Program; an informative and visually appealing new athletics website; Take Flight; a skill-based wellness experience geared towards first-years building connections and community among student athletes; and a revamped live stream service all serve to bring Cardinal Athletics into the homes of its supporters.
As a sign of his commitment to student-athlete mental health, Whalen was the recipient of the Christopher W. Martin Award. Announced by RADical Hope, the award honors those whose spirit, kindness, courage, grit, and vulnerability inspires others each day. Wesleyan's main program under the partnership with the RADical Hope Foundation is Take Flight. Now in its fourth year of existence, Take Flight is a skill-based wellness experience that builds connections and community among Wesleyan first-year student-athletes. Through engaging with peers, mentors, and a variety of resources, student-athletes develop skills that will be beneficial throughout college and beyond. Guided by student-athlete leaders, this four-week experience welcomes the incoming class to Wesleyan Athletics' Culture of Caring, defined by a commitment to the holistic development of the student, athlete, and person.
Since partnering with RADical Hope, Whalen has advocated for the program which has led to five new NESCAC RADical Hope partners: Amherst, Middlebury, Trinity, Hamilton, and Connecticut College, with more on the way. This conference approach has become a national model for program scaling as the foundation will support thousands of other students on over 50 campuses this spring.
During his productive tenure at Wesleyan, Whalen has overseen continual growth in donations and was instrumental in the creation of a Director of Athletic Fundraising position. With annual fundraising now topping $2.5 million under his leadership, Whalen made more history in early 2024 as the Wesleyan Athletics Giving Day exceeded $1,000,000 for the first time in school history. He has helped secure several major gifts including the funding of the FieldTurf playing surface and lighting at Citrin Field, locker room renovations, the Jones Family scoreboard that supports Jackson Field which also saw drainage piping and sod install, upgrades to the Natatorium, funding the Poligras Paris GT zero AstroTurf project (the first of its kind in the state of Connecticut) for Hicks Field (field hockey), replacing the lacrosse turf as well as adding a press box and new scoreboard at Smith Field, and dugout installs at the Softball Field, as well as securing at least one endowment for every varsity program at Wesleyan.
As director of athletics since 2012, the athletic program has achieved unparalleled success. Perhaps no better metric is the sheer volume of NESCAC Championship winning programs the department has seen in his tenure. Since 2012, Wesleyan has 17 NESCAC title winning teams. Prior to 2012, the school had just three teams win NESCAC Championships since the league was formally founded in 2000. The Cardinals recorded their highest finish ever in the Division III Learfield/IMG College Directors' Cup, finishing 14th overall out of 338 schools in 2018-19. That marked the culmination of a four-year run wherein Wesleyan moved up the standings from year-to-year, continuing their climb to be one of the top Division III athletic programs in the country. Since 2016-17, Wesleyan has finished Top 50 in the Directors' Cup standings in six straight seasons. When Whalen first took on the role of athletic director in 2012-13, the Cardinals finished 276th in the Directors' Cup standings that season. Just four years later, Wesleyan finished Top 50 in the Directors' Cup for the first time in school history in 2016-17 and has continued to thrive, landing six straight Top 50 finishes through the 2023-24 season. Three programs have won national championships in his tenure, men's lacrosse (2018), women's tennis (2019), and men's crew (2024), something that never happened prior to his arrival in Middletown.
NESCAC ADs Selected as NACDA Athletics Director of the Year
1998-99 - Rocco Carzo, Tufts
1999-00 - John Biddiscombe, Wesleyan
2004-05 - Suzanne Coffey, Bates
2020-21 - Jason Fein, Bates
2020-21 - Erin Quinn, Middlebury
2022-23 - John Morris, Tufts
2023-24 - Drew Galbraith, Trinity
2024-25 - MIke Whalen, Wesleyan
