The USOC today announced that West Coast Conference Associate Commissioner/Governance & Institutional Services and Senior Woman Administrator SARAH WILHELMI will become the organization's "first director of collegiate partnerships," according to Steve Berkowitz of USA TODAY. Wilhelmi will be responsible for bringing "full-time attention to long-discussed, but mostly scattershot, efforts at coordination among the USOC, national sports governing bodies and an array of college constituencies." That includes the NCAA’s executive staff, member schools, conferences and "various coaches’ associations." This "comes at a time when the pipeline of athletes" from D-I schools to U.S. Olympic teams "could be threatened by the financial pressure many schools are experiencing as they try to stay as competitive as possible in the high-profile sports of football, men’s basketball and women’s basketball." Wilhelmi will be "asked to coordinate the engagement of national governing bodies 'in all NCAA championships, including signage and sponsorship agreements' and to develop metrics and data to determine the impact of various initiatives 'to better understand future direction and (return on investment) for the NGBs and the USOC.'" Wilhelmi has "spent most of her career in college sports compliance and governance" (USATODAY.com, 5/3).
