Robert L. Carothers is completing an 18-year term as president at the University of Rhode Island. Carothers has been involved in the athletic program as much as any university president in recent years.

Today’s story is the third of six on Carothers’ impact on the URI athletic program.

URI baseball players celebrate their first-ever Atlantic 10 championship in May 2005. Carothers is credited by a former coach with saving the baseball program early in his temure as URI president.

Journal files

SOUTH KINGSTOWN – Men’s basketball and football garnered most of the headlines during the Carothers Era at the University of Rhode Island, but soccer and track collected most of the championships.

And they were not the only successful non-revenue, minor or Olympic sports – choose your term – during the 18 years that Robert L. Carothers served as URI’s president. Golf has been one of the top programs in New England for almost two decades, and volleyball was a power in the mid-1990s. Baseball has had a successful run of late. Women’s track and rowing have won titles, women’s soccer has played in the NCAA tournament, and women’s tennis has won three consecutive New England titles.

Perhaps the best indicator of URI’s success was its position near the top of the Atlantic 10 Commissioner’s Cup, which ranked members based on overall success in athletics, although this year URI did not win an A-10 title in any sport.

Ed Bradley took over as soccer coach in 1989, two years before Carothers arrived. His teams won 192 games and five Atlantic 10 championships and made six NCAA appearances during his 17 years on the sideline. He retired in 2005 after eight consecutive winning seasons and four NCAA tournaments during that period.

“I didn’t deal directly with the president. I dealt with the athletic directors, and I thought the athletic directors were very resourceful, believe me,” Bradley said Monday after directing the opening session of a soccer camp at Naples, Fla., where he resides.

“When I went to URI, we did not have the full complement of scholarships. The first few years were tough because we were at a playing disadvantage. Then the soccer team got more scholarships, and we got better. Now it’s one of the most successful programs there. The facilities need improving, but they were better at the end than in the beginning,” he said.

John O’Connor succeeded Bradley and has posted a 29-21-11 record in three seasons. His 2006 team won the A-10 and reached the second round of the NCAA tournament, and his 2007 and 2008 teams qualified for the A-10 tournament.

Women’s soccer won only two games in 1997, but coach Shelley Smith’s teams won 39 games the next three years. Her 2000 team qualified for the A-10 tournament for the first time and lost in the semifinals.

In 2002, Geoff Bennett coached the women to their best season: 16-6-1, runner-up in the A-10 tournament, first NCAA tournament bid and a second-round appearance. Lisa Cole followed with two A-10 tournaments and a runner-up finish in 2004 but left unexpectedly. Zac Shaw succeeded her and reached the A-10 final in 2005 and the semifinals in 2006.

Despite that success, the soccer Rams have not become a huge attraction at the gate.

“I have to admit that I thought soccer was going to become a much bigger thing once the youth soccer leagues took off everywhere, but it doesn’t seem to translate into attendance at collegiate levels,” Carothers said.

“After we put up lights, we got some big crowds,” Bradley said.

John Copeland, coach of men’s cross-country and track for 28 years, has produced five Atlantic 10 indoor championships and four second-place finishes since 2001. His outdoor team has won eight titles, despite training on a track that is unsuitable for competition. He has been the A-10 coach of the year. Laurie Feit-Melnick has won five A-10 indoor and four A-10 outdoor championships since 1992 and is a nine-time coach of the year. Both coaches produced conference champions, and thrower Jasmine Jennings returned from the 2009 NCAA Outdoor Championships an All-America after an eighth-place finish.

URI alum Frank Leoni became baseball coach in 1992 and in 1993 was looking at extinction.

“At the 11th hour, baseball was going to be dropped. I think it came down to Bob Carothers saving the baseball program. He made the decision that he was not going to drop baseball. I know John Vanner and Ron Petro were involved, but it all came down to what Bob Carothers wanted to do. He believed in me and gave me a chance,” Leoni said.

By 2000 URI was playing a regional schedule with teams laden with Rhode Island players. In 2003 the Rams qualified for the Atlantic 10 tournament for the first time in 19 years, and in 2005 they won the A-10 tournament and played in the NCAA regional.

When Leoni left for William & Mary, assistant coach Jim Foster succeeded him, strengthened the schedule and continued to recruit Rhode Islanders and win. The 2009 Rams fell one victory shy of the A-10 championship. Under Leoni and Foster, URI players have been drafted.

“Without Bob Carothers I wouldn’t me sitting where I am today,” Leoni said from Williamsburg. “That doesn’t mean I agreed with everything he did, but I understand that he was stuck between a rock and a hard place with so many stakeholders. I owe him a debt of gratitude.”

Golf is another success story. Veteran coach Tom Drennan has won five Atlantic 10 titles and 10 New England championships and has taken his team to 16 NCAA regionals. His 2004 team advanced to the NCAA national tournament, the first team from the East to do so since the current format was adopted in 1988. Drennan is a multiple coach of the year award winner, and his players have pursued careers in professional golf.

And there’s women’s rowing, launched in 1999. Coach Shelagh Donohoe’s Rams finished second in the A-10 in 2007, won the championship in 2008 and finished second in 2009.

And women’s tennis. During his five-year tenure from 2004 through this season, coach Sandy Wood’s teams compiled a 68-39 record, won 16 matches in 2007-2008, a URI record, and won three consecutive New England championships. Wood, the 2009 A-10 coach of the year, resigned after the season to move to Florida with his wife, who has Lyme disease.

Women’s volleyball won A-10 championships in 1991, 1992 and 1996 and qualified for the NCAA tournament in 1991 and 1996. Coach Bob Schneck’s 1995 team won 30 matches and his 1996 team 31, a school record.

Women’s swimming is not a championship program, but coach Mick Westkott trains solid citizens and students.

Softball has struggled through eight consecutive losing seasons with four coaches, and has had its controversy. Chris Sutcliffe resigned for “personal reasons” on April 20, 2005.

The black hole in the URI athletics program, in addition to football, is women’s basketball. Carothers had hoped to emulate the University of Connecticut, especially after the Ryan Center opened, but women’s basketball was a mess most of the time, not a success.

Linda Ziemke arrived in 1989, posted a 21-8 record and URI’s first NCAA tournament appearance in 1996, then watched players transfer and, midway through the 1999 season threaten a revolt that led to her suspension on Jan. 21, 1999, and resignation a month later.

Boe Pearman, a longtime assistant at Maryland, succeeded Ziemke and immediately created controversy by cutting three scholarship players, all seniors expected to start the 2000 season, for disciplinary reasons. Injuries, illness and controversy marked her four-year tenure, the highlight of which was a runner-up finish in the 2003 A-10 tournament. She missed two games in 2002 for treatment of breast cancer and 21 games in 2004 for health reasons. She resigned on July 14, 2004, with a 49-74 record in games she coached.

Athletics director Tom McElroy replaced Pearman with Tom Garrick, URI and NBA alum and Pearman’s assistant who filled in for her when she was on leave. Garrick avoided controversy during his five years as head coach, but injuries plagued his teams, and he compiled a 56-112 record. Thorr Bjorn, athletics director, dismissed him at the end of last season and has given the ball to Cathy Inglese, the successful head coach at Boston College for 15 years and Vermont for seven.

In a 1999 interview on the role of university presidents in intercollegiate athletics, Carothers said he spent 20 percent of his time dealing with sports. In 2008, he made one of the most difficult of his sports decisions when he approved the elimination of men’s tennis and swimming and women’s field hockey and gymnastics, and canceled plans to add women’s lacrosse, all in response to a budget crisis.

Ten years ago Carothers also said, “We should be good at whatever we choose to do.” In many cases under his watch, URI athletics programs have done just that.

Sports accomplishments in the Carothers era (1991-2009):

-Men's soccer: 6 Atlantic 10 championships, 7 NCAA tournament appearance

-Golf: 5 Atlantic 10 championships, 10 New England championships, 16 NCAA regional appearances, 1 NCAA national appearance

-Baseball: 1 Atlantic 10 championship, 1 NCAA regional appearance

-Men's track: 5 Atlantic 10 indoor championships, 7 Atlantic 10 outdoor championships

-Women's track: 5 Atlantic 10 indoor championships, 4 Atlantic 10 outdoor championships

-Women's rowing: 1 Atlantic 10 championship

-Women's tennis: 3 New England championships

-Volleyball: 3 Atlantic 10 championships

-Women's basketball: 1 NCAA tournament appearance.

mszostak@projo.com