Under the enthusiastic leadership of Neill McGeachy over the past six years, the intercollegiate athletics program at Lenoir-Rhyne has enjoyed tremendous growth and new energy.  He is foremost known for his creative promotions and marketing expertise; however, the skills he brings to the college and intercollegiate athletics are much broader.

He adroitly serves in a unique blending of two roles, as Director of Intercollegiate Athletics and as Executive Director of the Piedmont Educational Foundation/Bears Club, the official fundraising arm of the L-R Department of Athletics.

According to McGeachy, “We celebrate our athletic history of Lenoir-Rhyne, we compete in today and we look to the future.”

His involvement of all constituents –students, alumni, corporate, Hickory metro community, public school systems, emergency services, civic organizations, YMCA, Frye Regional Medical Center and Catawba Valley Medical Center – in a collaborative effort with athletics has enhanced the college’s overall growth and retention efforts.  In the process, new streams of revenue have been identified and introduced. They include: expanded radio broadcast sponsorships, Affinity and Corporate partnerships, the PEF Bears Club Gala, the LRC/Moretz Sports Championship Series, and now with the scheduling of Appalachian State University in football.

In his first year in 2002, he was instrumental in helping increase football season attendance two-fold (13,958 to 28,625) which led the NCAA Division II nationally in percentage of improvement that year.  In addition, the college has led the South Atlantic Conference the last six years in attendance numbers.

Since his arrival and his decision to return to night football games, a pre-game festival environment has included sponsored corporate tents, college        or community recognition events, entertainment groups, visiting marching bands, mystical bonfires, pep rallies and bagpipes.

This past fall, his negotiating skills initiated athletic experiences with two prominent, No. 1 nationally-ranked powerhouses.  In September, the Bears played Appalachian State University, a 76-year rival, for the first time since 1982.  Sixty-one days later, L-R played the University of North Carolina in basketball for the first time since 1949.  Both schools were ranked No. 1 in the country at the time of their meeting.  A combined 47,159 fans witnessed these two special contests.

Lenoir-Rhyne also visited the University of Texas in Austin for three straight years from 2004 to 2006.

Examples of literal metaphors that his vision has inspired include additions of The Front Porch and The Charge (12-foot, 2,100 pound bronze bear icon). 

In his first six years, five sports have been added to L-R athletics – women’s tennis, men’s and women’s track and field, women’s swimming and men’s tennis – bringing the total current number to 17 sports.  Soon he plans to raise it to 20 sports by adding men’s and women’s lacrosse in 2009-10 and men’s swimming in 2010-11.  This strategy is a concerted college effort to continue to offer attractive opportunities – both academic and athletic – that will grow the college’s enrollment base. 

He has utilized his sports and coaching background to finesse the operations of these team sports by hiring gifted and quality coaches, developing team marketing opportunities, and providing academic tutoring for student athletes.

With rapid expansion in the number of student-athletes (a 34% increase over a three-year period), and the number of sports on campus (soon to be 20), he has been instrumental in the establishment of a master land plan for athletics-related facility improvements and renovations in coordination with the college’s strategic plan for the future.

Assisted by his dedicated and talented staff, all this activity has made a dramatic impact.  Last year, Lenoir-Rhyne ranked fourth overall in the South Atlantic Conference Athletic Excellence Award standings, an all-time high.  Men’s soccer team finished with a record 19-1-1 and a final ranking of No. 5 in the nation while winning the conference tournament, the third title in school history.  Women’s softball, averaging 50 wins a season the past two years, again won both the regular season and conference championships and were participants in the NCAA regionals for the third time since 2002.  Baseball won a school record 35 games in 2007.  Both men’s and women’s basketball teams posted winning records and finished in the top four in the conference standings.  Men’s basketball won league titles in 2002-03, 2003-04, 2005-06 and 2007-08 and made three trips to the NCAA Division II Playoffs as well (2003, 2004 and 2008).  Women’s basketball was the SAC regular season champions in 2003-04 and tournament champions in 2003.  The volleyball team captured its second league title in three years in 2006 and advanced all the way to the SAC tournament finals.  Men’s cross country finished second in the conference four straight years (2003-06) while the women’s cross country placed second in the league this past fall and had a runner qualify for nationals.  Women’s golf captured league titles in 2003 and 2004.  Men’s golf tied for third in the SAC tournament last year after winning it in 2006.  The men’s track program had its long jumper advance to the national championships in 2007. 

From 1997-2002, McGeachy served as director of marketing with the United States Tennis Association (USTA) Southern Section in Atlanta, Ga.  Prior to the USTA, McGeachy was founder and president for 20 years of Sugar Creek Enterprises, a sports promotions company in Winston-Salem and Charlotte.

Several early men’s basketball coaching stints included assistant to Terry Holland at Davidson College for two years, helping lead the Wildcats to two conference championships.  After Davidson College in 1971, McGeachy became Duke’s freshmen basketball coach then was elevated to top assistant before becoming head coach in 1973-74.  Following his time at Duke, he coached two years at Wake Forest University as an assistant.  The Deacons won back-to-back Big Four Tournament titles while McGeachy was there.

A 1965 graduate of Lenoir-Rhyne, McGeachy was a three-sport standout for the Bears in football, basketball and track.  In 1987, he was inducted into the Lenoir-Rhyne Sports Hall of Fame.  McGeachy was also inducted into the North Carolina Tennis Hall of Fame in 1999.  “For the excellence of his activities in and connected with North Carolina Tennis which have brought substantial recognition and esteem to himself and to the state.”

Born in Charlotte, N.C., McGeachy grew up in Statesville N.C.  He is also the proud father of Roderick (Morehead Scholar at UNC-Chapel Hill and MBA graduate of Harvard’s Business School) and Ashley (14-year sports writer/columnist for publications such as Sports Illustrated, Louisville’s Courier-Journal and currently the Philadelphia Inquirer.)