Name: Angie Cretors
Position: UConn Senior Associate AD/NCAA Rules Education & Compliance
Age: 37
Where I’m from: Lenexa, Kan.
Where I call home: Coventry, Conn.
Focusing on right now: Revamping policies and procedures to be in line with new NCAA regulations.
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| Cretors is enjoying a new role after 10 years in enforcement left her feeling burned out |
Best advice: Always try hard and not to fear the unknown. I’ve had a lot of great mentors. Lucky for me, they were all female when I was at the NCAA and were really supportive. When I was thinking of making a change, they encouraged me to do what was going to make me happy. You kind of get stuck in a comfort zone, and they really challenged me.
A must for a new hire: Someone who wants to work hard, who is willing to learn and to take on challenges, because you learn something new every day. Someone that can communicate and relate to a student-athlete and coaches. Someone that just gets it. You can tell right off the bat someone who’s going to get it, and someone who doesn't.
Exec I admire the most: I would say JULIE ROE LACH, the former vice president of enforcement, and RACHEL NEWMAN BAKER, the person who hired me at the NCAA full time. And then LUANN HUMPHREY. LuAnn was my last director and had been a mentor of mine for a really long time. All three were instrumental in who I am today and where I am today.
Best book I’ve read this year: "Daring Greatly,” by BRENE BROWN. It talks about making yourself vulnerable and the negative stereotypes and the negativity that’s generally associated with that word. It talks about allowing yourself to make changes, take risks. Through my changes of moving across the country and taking on my new job and new challenges, it’s a book that definitely resonated with me.
First thing in the morning: I check my phone for e-mails. I go to bed early -- about 9:00pm -- and wake up at 5:00am. I check e-mails, I’ll check Twitter and see what happened from 9:00am-5:00pm. I’ll do that and then take my dog Allie out. That’s the female name for Allen Fieldhouse. I went to Kansas and could not name her Allen, so I named her the female version as close as I could.
Talking tech: I don’t tweet a lot. I retweet different things but I’m not a huge tweet my own thoughts type of person. I follow sports, I follow the entertainment gossip, CNN. I follow a wide variety, a lot of our student athletes. I can learn what our kids did the night before, I can learn the sports scores and then I can learn what the KARDASHIANS are doing all in the morning.
Must have music: I love all kinds of music. I’m a huge EMINEM fan. JUSTIN TIMBERLAKE, JAY Z. I love '80s music, too. I listen to just about everything, except heavy metal, I don’t need any more headaches, it just sounds like screeching noise to me.
Food for thought: My favorite place to go is Geno’s Grill, and I do not say that just to earn bonus points with our women’s head basketball coach. It’s a great place to go -- really laid back, great food, great company and hospitality.
How I unwind: I try to travel internationally once a year -- the past couple years my favorite place to unwind has been St. Croix. I usually take four or five days. Last time I just went by myself and just read books, turned off my phone and was by the ocean.
Day in the life: In the 10 years I was at the NCAA, I was in enforcement completely. I loved the job -- it was a dream job of mine. But you always kind of see the negatives when you’re in enforcement. You’re dealing with people that are possibly or alleged to have violated the rules, so you’re kind of always viewed as the enemy. You’re not always welcomed onto campus. It’s an important role, I loved it, but at a certain point for me, it became where I wasn’t enjoying sports as much. You didn’t get to interact with the student athletes unless you were there interviewing them and so I knew for me I needed a change. It just burned me out.
