The NCAA News
By Leilana McKindra
College Web site
keys on winning with class
When
Indiana University of Pennsylvania head baseball coach Jeff Ditch arrived on
campus about 18 months ago, he launched the team’s academic support program,
called “WINwithCLASS.”
The goal of the program was to provide peer support, accountability, time
management, progress reports, study hall, tutors, classroom attentiveness,
classroom participation and 100 percent class attendance. But Ditch wanted to
use the Internet to do more to support not only the school’s student-athletes,
but others beyond the Indiana campus.
Last month, Ditch unveiled the WINwithCLASS Web site, which not only trumpets
his players’ academic, athletics and community-engagement efforts, but also
provides motivational content designed to inspire any student-athlete who logs
on.
The site highlights team goals and successes, spotlights a baseball
student-athlete of the week and shares team members’ community-service
activities, features that Ditch hopes will encourage players to achieve academic
and personal success while also building ties with the local community.
The Web site also features a motivational and inspirational column called “Reach
Out for Advice,” in which Ditch periodically invites guest columnists to share
insights on various topics. Past columnists include Christian Klemash, author of
“How to Succeed in the Game of Life” (34 interviews with the world’s greatest
coaches), and current Indiana head football coach and three-time Pennsylvania
State Athletic Conference Coach of the Year Lou Tepper.
“The words ‘World Wide Web’ are powerful when you can put something online and
it’s accessible to everybody. That allows us to open our program to anybody with
interest,” said Ditch, who encourages student-athletes at Indiana and all over
the country to check the site out.
Though the project is still in the early stages — it was launched January 15 —
Ditch said interest in the Web site is growing daily.
“I think it’s easy to follow wins and losses, and stats and all that kind of
stuff, but there’s so much more to the student-athlete experience,” he said. “I
want the Web site to highlight those things.”
