Bodkins

SHEPHERDSTOWN — Nothing but success can be found in new Shepherd University Athletic Director Carrie Bodkins’ past.

Bodkins became the Athletic Director at Shepherd, following an athletic downturn of sorts at the local college.

In all of the 2023-2024 school term, the Rams had only two teams that had winning seasons — football and women’s soccer.

The Pennsylvania State Athletic Conference and its far-flung grouping of schools took its toll on a vast majority of the Shepherd teams.

Beginning in the fall of 2023, the men’s soccer, cross country, golf and tennis teams failed to win more games than they lost. None of the women’s teams other than the soccer team (seven wins, five losses and six ties) could find winning seasons. That included the volleyball team for the women, where there is no men’s team.

In the winter, both Shepherd basketball teams had more losses than wins.

Spring brought losing seasons for the baseball, softball, lacrosse, tennis, golf and cross country teams.

Money for athletics is usually in no short supply at PSAC schools.

Bodkins attended Alderson Broaddus University in Phillippi and was on both the school’s volleyball and basketball teams. She also has a degree from Fairmont State University and a master’s degree from West Virginia University.

So accomplished was she in her playing days that she was enshrined in the Alderson Broaddus Athletic Hall of Fame.

She once coached the Battler volleyball team.

Bodkins began her coaching career at Davis & Elkins as the volleyball coach.

Before Shepherd, she was the Athletic Director at Alderson Broaddus for 18 years.

The Pennsylvania State Athletic Conference became Shepherd’s home once the college departed the Mountain East Conference and before that had resided in the West Virginia Intercollegiate Athletic Conference (WVIAC) for many, many years.

The PSAC has schools from all across Pennsylvania, but one (Mercyhurst) just left and became an NCAA Division I school.

Bodkins is the first in-place Athletic Director since Chauncey Winbush left for NCAA Division I at Miami of Ohio. Melanie Ford had been the interim athletic director at Shepherd, after Winbush departed.

The PSAC will get no easier to compete in. Those schools will not see their pools of money designated for athletics dry up any time soon. It will take more than energy, a positive attitude and a non-ending work ethic to bring the Rams to the athletic heights much of that conference have already reached.