The Role of Athletics at Harvard & Beyond w/Athletic Director McDermott & Coach Amaker
ONLY A GAME?: EXPLORING THE ROLE OF COLLEGE SPORTS AT HARVARD AND BEYOND
A discussion with Harvard Athletic Director Erin McDermott and Harvard Basketball Coach Tommy Amaker
A Massachusetts native, Erin McDermott was named Harvard’s eighth John D. Nichols ’53 Family Director of Athletics on July 1, 2020 this following a seven-year tenure as Director of Athletics & Recreation at the University of Chicago. Under her leadership, the Maroons captured 19 UAA championships, seven NCAA individual event championships and six top-20 finishes in the Learfield Sports Directors’ Cup standings amongst the 450 NCAA Division III institutions. Additionally, 15 Chicago student-athletes were selected as CoSIDA Academic All-Americans, one of the top academic awards in collegiate athletics.
Prior to her seven years at Chicago, McDermott spent a significant part of her career in the Ivy League at Princeton and Columbia. In her 13 years at Princeton, she climbed the ranks to Deputy Director of Athletics, where she oversaw all internal operations for 38 intercollegiate sports. Before Princeton, McDermott spent three years at Columbia as the Assistant Director for Compliance. A Division I student-athlete at Hofstra, McDermott was a senior captain of the women’s basketball team and was named the school’s top female scholar-athlete as a senior. In 1994 She graduated from Hofstra with a bachelor of business administration degree in international business before earning her master’s degree in sport management from the University of Massachusetts in 1996.
Tommy Amaker, the Thomas G. Stemberg '71 Family Endowed Coach for Harvard Men's Basketball, has been head coach of Harvard’s men’s basketball for 15 years during which he has reinvented the Crimson into an Ivy League power with a national presence. He has directed Harvard to a period of unprecedented prosperity in the form of seven Ivy League championships (2011-15, 2018-19), four NCAA tournament appearances (2012-15) and seven 20-win seasons (2010-15, 2020). Amaker is the all-time winningest coach of the Crimson, and the 2021-22 campaign will mark his 15th in Cambridge.Prior to Harvard, Amaker was head Coach at the University of Michigan and Seton Hall University. He earned his undergraduate degree at Duke University where he played for the Blue Devils and later served as an assistant coach under the legendary Coach Mike Kryzewski.
Monday, June 14, 6:30-8:00
FREE for Harvard Club Members; $15. for Nonmembers