It’s never easy jumping into a new job, especially when a pandemic strikes one year into it, impacting everything from financial stability to basic social life. However, the difficulties University of Idaho Athletics faced didn’t deter Director Terry Gawlik.
Gawlik began her career at the UI September 1, 2019. With her, she brought 25 years of leadership experience. She played basketball and volleyball at Southwestern University in Texas and graduated with a bachelor’s degree in physical education and English. She then earned her master’s degree in physical education and educational administration from Texas State University.
Afterward, she found herself moving to Wisconsin with her now husband and working at the University of Wisconsin for the athletic department.
“They hired me to be the event manager for several sports and I also worked in the rec sports department on campus,” Gawlik said. “I spent 25 years there, pretty much climbing the ladder, kept getting more and more responsibilities put on me.”
Among those responsibilities was being on many NCAA committees, such as soccer, volleyball and women’s basketball. At one point she oversaw 16 sports at once. Eventually, she found her way to UI after a friend of hers called her up and told her the university was looking for a new athletic director.
“I started digging into it,” Gawlik said. “I have a really good friend that worked at the Pac-12 office, and I asked her to check into it. I actually called the former commissioner of the BSky (Conference), Andrea Williams, who is now at the college football playoff office.”
After calling around and getting more information on the job, she met with UI President Scott Green and a committee, and was then hired.
Athletic directors face challenges in their job, with athletes, coaches and events. However, Gawlik was not expecting to face a pandemic right after her first year.
“We didn’t know form day to day, where are we going to play, how many games are we going to play, is it going to be the schedule as it was,” Gawlik said.
Gawlik and her staff took time to set up a COVID-19 safety plan last April to ensure the safety of the athletes, and to ensure athletics could still happen for student-athletes and fans.
Gawlik said they planned out when athletes should get tested, how many could be in the weight room or practice at once as well as setting up a rigorous contact tracing system to ensure that no outbreaks would affect the teams. While they couldn’t prevent every athlete from getting COVID-19, Gawlik said she thinks they still did a grand job protecting athletes and ensuring most sports could still have somewhat of a season.
Her ability to work with other athletics staff at UI has drawn praise from coaches. Mark Sowa, the head coach of swim, praised her leadership during the pandemic.
“She did a very good job of trusting,” Sowa said. “Not only President Green in terms of his belief in the importance of keeping athletics rolling, but also using her staff, like the head athletic trainer Chris Walsh, putting trust in him to figure out the proper protocols, putting her trust in our strength training staff to make sure that all athletes had access to strength training, and really being aggressive, but being patient at the same time.”
Sowa said she would meet with the athletic department once a week and would always ask how both the athletic staff and the athletes are doing. Sowa said it showed she had their best interests at heart, for both staff and athletes.
Gawlik said she is excited for next semester, and hopes there will be more games. However, due to the unpredictability of COVID-19, she said she doesn’t want to make any promises yet.
Ryan Hill can be reached at [email protected] or on Twitter @RyanHil32959860