A lifetime of sports and a career goal to become an athletic director led Barbara Burke to that position at Eastern. Now she gets the chance to lead a new staff and experience collegiate sporting events like women’s rugby and men’s soccer – sports her previous school, Wyoming, didn’t offer. She recently sat down with Sports Editor Scott Richey to discuss her transition from Wyoming to Charleston and what made her decide to pursue athletic administration.

How did you first get interested in sports?

Well, as a youngster I played sports a lot. At my age when you were young you just played games, played outside. Just played a lot, enjoyed it. I just became involved at a young age and then played in college and really enjoyed it. Pretty much in college I decided I wanted to coach and possibly go into administration, so I coached for several years and then just felt like I was better suited for the administrative side of the house. It’s just been a goal of mine to be an athletic director and whether that’s an associate AD or whatever the title is just to have the opportunity to lead an athletic department. In particular my goal was always Division I, and that’s what I’ve worked toward.

What did you enjoy the most about coaching?

The interaction with the student-athletes. There’s no question about that. For the most part your student-athletes are highly motivated. Most of the time they’re very organized, and they’re really driven, quality young people. I enjoy being around people that are driven and high-energy. I just think that excitement of seeing them succeed and feeling like you played a role in that success – however small that might be. I didn’t like the highs and lows of winning and losing, and I still don’t like that either.

What made you decide to pursue administration?

I feel like I have some pretty good organizational skills and then also the stability. Coaching, I wouldn’t call it a stable profession by any stretch of the imagination and athletic administration isn’t either, but a little bit you control your own destiny as an administrator you’re not depending on 18- and 19-year-olds for your career. You are to some extent, but as an administrator your interaction with the coaches really determines what you do with your career. The stability of moving into administration was a draw.

What was your first administration job like?

It was great. I started in administration at Marshall University in Huntington, W. Va., and I worked for an athletic director who we have become now lifelong friends. He was not easy on me by any stretch of the imagination, but that probably helped me more than anything. The learning curve was huge because when you come out of coaching you have blinders on and it’s all about your one program and it’s all about your student-athletes and you really don’t care what the other programs are doing, unfortunately, but that’s kind of the mindset.

Then you go into administration and – oh my gosh – you’re dealing with everything from compliance to budgets to strength training and sports medicine and 10 coaches instead of only one coach. It’s very time consuming. As a coach you kind of shut down a little bit after practice. As an administrator, there is no shutting down. You really don’t shut down as an administrator which as a coach you can do that on occasion.

What did you have to adapt to as an administrator?

This was many, many years ago, but when I first did it, the comprehensive nature of the business. If you’re doing your jobs – and I do mean jobs plural – it looks really easy, but it’s a very complex business. I think that was probably my biggest learning curve. How complex (the business) is from the NCAA rules to compliance to the legal issues that you deal with to dealing with the media, dealing with your constituents. Unfortunately all of those various groups only have a small piece of the puzzle and a lot of times they don’t put the puzzle together correctly. The other thing that has amazed me is some of the criticisms that we take and that people would actually believe we would make bad decisions on purpose. As long as we make our decisions on the best interest of the student-athletes I’m OK with that.

What are your goals for your first year?

Survive. I’m kidding, but a little bit of that. I want to learn about Eastern as a whole and the institution as a whole. That’s really important. I want to learn what does Eastern want their athletic program to look like? I want to provide leadership to the staff and have an opportunity to mentor them and have them feel good about their profession and what they do and that there’s value in what they do and they bring value to the office every day. It’s a tough enough business with the outside criticizing the inside. We on the inside need to support each other. I think it’s really important we develop that, and we’re beginning to do that. Then providing that leadership and support to the coaches and letting them know that our goal is to help them be successful. Most importantly, the student-athletes. Making sure that we’re guiding and directing and being good role models for the student-athletes. If we’re doing those things, the outcomes should be positive. We won’t necessarily win all the time, but are we moving in that direction and are we making progress?

What sports are you looking forward to this year?

Part of my enjoyment of being an athletic director is getting to see the young people compete. I’ve not seen a collegiate rugby match, so I’m excited to see that. We did not have men’s soccer at Wyoming. I stepped out to see their exhibition game the other night, so that was kind of fun to see a men’s collegiate soccer game. I enjoyed that.

Where do you like to eat in Charleston?

I don’t know if I have a favorite place yet honestly. I’ve been to AJ’s a lot. We’ve taken a lot of guests and people there. I do like a variety of options. I’ve checked out the Thai restaurant in town. That was good. I do enjoy cooking out in the summer. I’ve been taking that opportunity.

Just grill food. I love pork chops on the grill. Summer salads are fun. We have a longer summer here than I had in Wyoming, so I’ve experienced more in probably June and July than I did there. I’m not sure about the humidity yet.

How’s the transition been from Wyoming?

It’s been relatively easy as far as transitions go. Everyone’s been wonderful here, very accepting. I was so fortunate to be able to sell a home and buy a home in this economy. It has been really a blessing for me because that was one thing I didn’t have to worry about.

I had no misadventures on the move. No issues with the moving company. I was fortunate. I was able to plan it where I actually moved to Charleston in May and didn’t start work until June, so that first month I focused on personal issues of getting settled.

Where’s your golf game at right now?

I’m out at the Charleston Country Club. I’ve only played two or three times out there. I’ve been to every golf outing, and so that’s been good for me to get out and meet some people and participate in the golf outings. Now I probably won’t play golf.

Do you have a favorite author or book?

I’m a big reader, and almost every night I read and a variety of authors. From if you want to say an educational standpoint John Maxwell is one of my favorite authors as far as leadership and those types of things. For pleasure, John Grisham and Robin Cooke and Dick Francis. I think I’ve read every one of theirs that they have out there.

Scott Richey can be reached at 581-7944 or at srrichey@eiu.edu.

Barbara Burke, the ninth full-time athletic director in 108 years of Eastern athletics and Eastern’s first female athletic director, assumed her duties at Eastern on June 1. Burke, who replaced interim athletic director Ken Baker, was previously the deput

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