The tales from the early years of FGCU Athletics are so widely known they can almost tell themselves: swamp land clogged with thickets of invasive melaleuca trees, alligators as big as airboats, a pioneer spirit, no recruiting budget, great camaraderie, a refusal to lose…
Twenty years since the first ball was struck in an official Eagles capacity, what remains as fresh as the day they arrived is the awe at how much has been accomplished in so short a time.
“Some days you really have to sit back and say wow,” FGCU Director of Athletics Ken Kavanagh says of a program that began in 2000-01 with four sports – men’s and women’s golf and tennis – before growing to a 15-team, NCAA Division-I program widely lauded for its many on-and off-field successes. “There have been some really special people.”
In a department where praise is broadly shared and notions of character and integrity go far beyond lip service, the credit always starts in the beginning, with great vision and devotion.
It was founding university President Roy McTarnaghan’s desire for all students to accumulate service-learning hours that has long been such an important piece of FGCU Athletics’ close connection with the community, Kavanagh said.
It was second FGCU President William C. Merwin’s vision for an elite D-II program that he thought would someday grow to D-I that helped enable so rapid an ascension.
There’s eternal indebtedness to boosters past, present and future, starting with late school benefactor Ben Hill Griffin, III, who died in July at age 78. His $5 million gift turned what would have been a modest gym into the prized Alico Arena, opened in 2002.
Recent years have seen critical, seven-figure donations from multiple donors, including FGCU baseball alum and MLB star Chris Sale, to continue expanding facilities never intended to host a midsize D-I juggernaut.
But all also point back to the day-one devotion of area backers, such as the late Duane Swanson, for whom FGCU’s baseball stadium is named, and Harvey Youngquist, responsible for calling in countless favors to help turn that reptile-infested swamp into premier facilities.
“He called everybody under the sun, anybody that had a trucking business or fill (dirt),” said Stanley “Butch” Perchan, who retired in 2014 as FGCU’s long-time lead fundraising officer for athletics but who still supports that role through the FGCU Foundation.
“He told them, ‘These boys ain’t got no money. They need your help.’ It was hundreds of thousands of hours. And he put it together – saved us so much money.”
With no alumni of which to speak, FGCU then – and to some extent still today – has depended on Southwest Floridians who attended college elsewhere to adopt the Eagles as their own.
“Without this community,” Perchan said, “I don’t think we’d be anywhere near the level we’re at now.”
“I don’t know if there’s another school that’s won more conference titles in all sports than we have over the same time,” said Eagles baseball coach Dave Tollett, one of four program founding coaches still with FGCU. “We’re good in everything.”
“Without this community, I don’t think we’d be anywhere near the level we’re at now.”
‘STANLEY “ BUTCH” PERCHAN, LEAD FUNDRAISING OFFICER, RETIRED
From Year One through today, though, it’s the endless immeasurable contributions that arguably have been the strongest storyline in FGCU Athletics.
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