Husson University’s new athletic director has been on the job for a week, and he’s already thinking about ways to build on the school’s success at the conference level.
Christopher Parsons has taken the athletic reins at the Bangor-based school, which has won more than 10 North Atlantic Conference championships across its various Division III sports programs in the past few years alone.
“I think, for now, Husson has consistently been able to compete and win championships in the North Atlantic Conference with the majority of their teams,” Parsons told the Bangor Daily News on Monday. “The next step for me is to really try to get us to a place where we can compete on a national stage.”
Parsons, who most recently served as vice president for intercollegiate athletics at Thomas College in Waterville, is Husson’s second new athletic director this year.
The university’s previous hire, Amanda Nelson, was placed on administrative leave on her first day, pending an investigation into a civil lawsuit in California. She resigned later that week, according to the school, and Husson restarted its search for a new athletic director.
The school named Parsons as the new athletic director on Aug. 1. Despite his long tenure at Thomas College, Parsons said he couldn’t pass up the professional opportunity to build on the winning culture at Husson.
He sees a “tremendous amount of opportunity for growth” in Husson athletics, and is thinking about ways to potentially add varsity programs and competitive club teams.
“When I think about athletics, you know, it really comes back to three things,” Parsons said. “It’s how are we driving enrollment for the institution? How are we providing a good student athlete experience and how are we keeping them here? How are we maintaining that retention level?”
He declined to get into specifics this early in the new role about potential varsity sports to add. For competitive club programs, he sees the potential to create teams in traditional sports like women’s and men’s basketball, football, soccer, baseball and softball, as some examples.
“I think that’s something that I might be able to bring with me from Thomas College,” Parsons said. “We really started a new competitive club program that took off in the last two years.”
