Staying Involved
April 16, 2010 11:30 AM | General
By Grant Dovey for MSNsportsNET.com
April 16, 2010
MORGANTOWN, W.Va. - With all that there is to do in Morgantown and through the University and with more than 90 percent of retired faculty living in or around Morgantown, there needed to be a program set up through the athletic department to give these retirees something to do that involved sports.
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| Sophia Blaydes has become an integral part of the athletic department.
WVU Sports Communications photo |
The right person for the job turned out to be Dr. Sophia Blaydes, a retired English professor, who spent nearly 30 years teaching at WVU. Blaydes has always played a major role in the University and started the Committee of Retired Faculty in 1988.
“Dr. Sophia Blaydes, who is a retired English professor, attends a lot of our contests and is a former member of the athletic council,” WVU Director of Athletics Ed Pastilong said. “She and I had discussed this awhile back and we have offered her an office in the Coliseum with clerical assistance, and in actuality, she’s become a part of our athletic department.”
Blaydes is now working with Pastilong to provide retired faculty with free tickets to varsity sports, excluding football and men’s basketball.
The first event this season was a gymnastics meet against Bowling Green where a number of people came out and the second-ever event will be a baseball game against Notre Dame on May 8 at Hawley Field. Blaydes’ partnership with the athletic department allows one ticket per retired faculty and one complimentary ticket. Blaydes is hoping that the program grows next year to include every game for every sport.
“Sophia has been corresponding to the retired faculty and the response has been good. We anticipate this spring having a nice following in baseball,” Pastilong said. “We have a nice stadium, easy parking and Dr. Blaydes is making arrangements for our coaches to attend the retired faculty monthly meetings and make a small presentation about their particular programs.”
The grassroots for the program began when Blaydes was a member of the athletic council and Alexis Basil was the head coach of the women’s basketball program. Blaydes and Basil were able to start a mentoring program that lasted from 1998-2001.
“I got about 35 retired faculty and we would meet as a group for a pizza party after a game, and I got not only the names and backgrounds of the young women, but also their majors,” Blaydes said. “If someone was interested in law, I matched them up with lawyers. It was informal, but it was all faculty and it was really neat.”
The program got the retired faculty hooked on going to women’s basketball games, even after the mentoring program had diminished. Blaydes began to feel distressed because there were not many people going to games and the mentors were still paying to attend.
“It’s not a lot,” Blaydes said about the price of attending contests. “However, when you’re on a fixed income, you don’t throw money around.”
Blaydes had been all too familiar of the financial strains because of her work with the Committee of Retired Faculty. The committee had been paying out of pocket for all of their expenses until Wayne King, the President and CEO of the WVU Foundation attended one of the committees meetings.
“A lot of people absolutely refuse to use e-mail, and we had to get this mail out and it cost a bundle,” Blaydes said. “Wayne King liked what we were doing and came back with a proposal that the Foundation would go into a partnership with the retired faculty and would take over the database. The Foundation would get donors for the refreshments, and they would do all of the mailing and print a newsletter.”
Blaydes put together a proposal for the ticket program and presented it to Pastilong, who gladly accepted it and gave Blaydes more than she had ever hoped for.
“My enthusiasm at the time was to get more people out to see women’s basketball games,” Blaydes said. “Little by little, when Ed told me he was going to provide me with an office and staff help, the more I thought about it, the more I thought, this wouldn’t be a bad thing for the other sports as well.”
Pastilong’s generous nature has been much appreciated by Blaydes who says the program would not have gotten as far as it has without his help.
“What I have learned about Ed is that he is honest and that he follows the rules,” Blaydes said. “My respect for Ed is boundless.”
She believes that most people stay around Morgantown because of the proximity of every day amenities.
“We live over in Suncrest and within a quarter-mile is our bank in one direction, our cleaners in the other,” Blaydes said. “A little farther along is the football stadium, coming back here is our pharmacy and grocery store and then there’s the CAC (Creative Arts Center) and then there is the Coliseum. It is close and it’s not a hassle to get places.”
Pastilong echoed Blaydes’ statement citing the same reasons.
“This is a comfortable community to reside in and the University offers a large number of events aside from athletics. That’s one of the reasons that a large number of retired employees remain in Morgantown and close to the University following their retirement,” Pastilong said. “What Sophia and the athletic department are incorporating adds to the number of activities that retired people enjoy doing, entertainment. Retired faculty spent most of their lives working with college students and they enjoy being around them, so it’s our belief that they’ll enjoy continuing a small part of that with athletic contests.
“We in the athletic department are appreciative to Sophia. She is a lady who has a tremendous amount of energy and has come up with some excellent ideas and we feel that this is something the retired faculty will enjoy and will benefit occupancy for these contests.”
