Hanover -- In the five months since he started work as Dartmouth's athletic director, Harry Sheehy has energized Big Green sports with his upbeat, no-nonsense approach.

Seemingly at every on-campus contest and fitting those visits into lengthy workdays, the 57-year old has hit the ground at a dead sprint. It's almost impossible to find someone with a bad word to say about the man who previously held the same position at Williams College in western Massachusetts for 10 years, but Sheehy has yet to fire a coach, buck the college administration or contend with a public-relations mess.

The Valley News sat down with Sheehy last week and got his thoughts on a range of topics, including athletics fundraising, whether his department is overstaffed and how he plans to deal with inappropriate fan behavior at home games. The following is an edited transcript of that conversation.

Valley News: What was the first thing that needed your attention here?

Harry Sheehy: I would say morale, although not in a blatant way. I think everyone who works here knows it's a good place to work, but there had been a general malaise. Some of that is just how some of the front-porch sports have been doing. No matter how well you do in something else, some people look at how you're doing in the front-porch sports, and for better or worse, that’s how they judge your institution.

I've told the coaches we're going to work on admissions and financial aid and your job is to step out and bloody Harvard, Yale and Princeton's noses a little bit, and if we get beat, we get beat. If you get knocked down, get up, because we won't get knocked down forever. I firmly believe we’re going to create a better winning environment, and to do that, you show up and you live it; you show confidence. I think, in three years, we should feel markedly different about our programs.

VN: What similarities and differences have you found between Dartmouth and Williams and the NCAA Division I and III levels?

HS: The environments of the campuses, the way they look and feel and the nature and quality of the student body attracted to them are very similar. We have 34 teams here and Williams has 32, but the depth and breadth of programs is larger at Dartmouth, so you have an NCAA compliance issue that doesn't exist in Division III. There, student-athletes don't have to go through the NCAA (recruiting eligibility) clearinghouse, so I had never dealt with that before.

Scheduling is another difference, because at Williams, our teams weren't going to New Mexico or Iowa or Michigan to play. At Dartmouth, we need to provide those experiences if we want to recruit Division I athletes. The fundraising piece is also very different, because there is a desire and a need for Dartmouth's athletic director to be involved. There are experts in that on campus, but wherever I can be a help, I want to be. When you look for a job, you look for a place you're compatible with but where you also have some new challenge. That’s why this has been so much fun for me.

VN: What do you think of relations between Dartmouth's athletics and admissions departments?

HS: Admissions has been phenomenal in that we now have parameters (for who can be accepted) and nine out of 10 times, I agree with them. They are professionals and understand how a (potential) student might struggle much more than we do. They've seen who's been admitted for years and years and they know who shows up in front of the deans in trouble and who struggles academically. It doesn’t mean we shouldn’t take a risk on some of those kids, because Dartmouth can transform their lives, but this is too good a place to not want excellence across the board.

VN: Dartmouth was the last Ivy League institution to hire a full-time fundraiser for its athletics department. How is that working out?

HS: Gavin Viano was hired from Drexel University (in Philadelphia) by Dartmouth's development office, and he works full-time on athletics. I'm not as concerned where he sits every day as I am where he’s focused every day. I feel great about Gavin, and he has a lot of expertise we're going to be able to tap into. There’s a science to fundraising for athletics, and it requires skills outside of those that an athletic director or associate athletic director might have.

We have to point at the areas where we need to get better, and there has to be intentional, purposeful, strategic planning in action. That's what (Viano's hiring) is a sign of. That’s a big difference for our department. We don’t want to be the tail that wags the dog, but we serve almost every Dartmouth student when you consider PE, club sports, recreation and athletics. This is one area that's been lacking, and now it’s taken care of.

VN: Can you elaborate on how the fundraising will progress?

HS: We'll start with six pilot teams and once we get their (fundraising) established, we'll move on to others. It's teams where we have already done some of the groundwork with our alums. Men’s and women’s lacrosse, men's and women’s track and men’s and women’s basketball are the first six. We’ll use a model that football recently used with success. There’s no particular philosophical statement in the order (of which teams go first). It's because these guys have already had some (fundraising) going on, and we’re going to start with them because it’s easier. We’ve also encouraged the (department’s) other coaches to do those things. Make sure you’re connected with your alums, so that when we do get to your team and your alums, it’s not just, “Hey, we want money.”

VN: There is a sense in some quarters that the athletic department's staff is bloated and has senior-level fat that could be trimmed. What's your response?

HS: We may have some alums who say that, but if you get on any other Ivy League athletics website, you'll see we're running the same program with fewer people. That doesn’t necessarily mean their concern is wrong, but I think people here are working hard, and I'm impressed by that.

I'm usually here by 7 a.m. and my first day, there were people in here ahead of me. That never happened at Williams, but it's happened regularly here, in addition to people staying late and working weekends. There probably isn't a very realistic understanding, outside of a Division I program, of what it takes to run a Division I program. Compliance and schedules and travel have to get done. I don't feel like I could say to someone here that you’re really not working and we really don’t need you. My initial impression is that no one’s making up things to do.

VN: Occasional misbehavior by a small number of Dartmouth students at home games has created problems in the last year or so. How do you plan to handle this?

HS: The (fan behavior) cultures of sports are different, and we have to recognize that. At one of the (home squash) matches recently, there was so much hooting and hollering that you couldn't hear the introductions of the other team. Prior to the next match, I talked with a couple of students and explained that I thought it was rude, at a squash match, not to allow the guest team to be heard during the introductions. They changed their behavior right away, and I appreciated it. Had they not respected my wishes, I would have asked them to come to my office and we would have talked about them potentially not being at squash matches anymore. We love enthusiasm from our fans, but we want it to be positive.

VN: How firmly can you put your foot down in this area? The rowdiest fans are sometimes Dartmouth athletes themselves.

HS: I think we have to push that envelope a little bit. It's a strange world where we've come to put up with some of the things that we do. At the home men's ice hockey game against Yale, we had several seats broken. That kind of damage is senseless. If we purport to love Dartmouth, then we should take care of our school. I'll shut down the front row (of Thompson Arena’s student section) and take those seats out, because I’m not going to watch the glass come down because people are hanging on (it) and rocking (it).

There's a safety issue there, but there's also a right way to act. It's not right to have your head hanging over the glass into the penalty box, shouting obscenities. It's simply not an educated way to act. We’ve had some conversations with the coaches, and I’ve told them I want (fan behavior expectations) communicated by them to their players and I don't want you winking at it. If we’re going to wink at it, we’re going to have a problem. If I have to step in, it’s not going to be nearly as pleasant for anyone involved. I hope to work on this with our Student Athlete Advisory Board.

I've had students and college presidents make passionate First Amendment, freedom-of-speech cases to me on this issue, but I just don't think we need to live with (fan misbehavior) at certain levels. Dartmouth is too good a place to have this be an ongoing concern. We're fighting a culture that exists at most, if not all, colleges and universities, and I may bump up against this, but we’re going to try.

VN: Head coaches in softball, women's soccer and volleyball have departed since you arrived. Are you cleaning house?

HS: None of those coaches were fired. (Former women's soccer coach) Angie Hind had a good opportunity with the (Scottish) national program (Stanford assistant Theresa Wagner was hired on Thursday), and (former volleyball coach) Ann Marie Larese was taking her life in a different direction. I had an exit interview where (former softball coach) Christine Vogt said she loved the kids and the program and didn't really give me a reason for why she was leaving. I didn’t dig into it because I had just gotten the job a few days earlier.

VN: Guessing which head coach you'll remove first has become something of a parlor game. How will you decide who stays and who goes?

HS: I just need to feel happy with how a program's going. I had coaches I didn't renew at Williams who were winning tons of games, including in one case, the most in the program's history, but it wasn’t in the right way. I wasn’t comfortable with how our kids were developing as people or as players, even though the team was good. And I've hung with some coaches whose (records) weren’t very good, but I thought they were good coaches.

I'm trying to create a level of excellence and I don't think (Vogt, Hind or Larese) left because of that. If any coaches do leave because of it, however, so be it.

Tris Wykes can be reached at twykes@vnews.com or (603) 727-3227.