Sayre Earns CCC Athletic Director of the Year
LA GRANDE, Ore. – Matt Sayre, whose dramatic transformation of Southern Oregon University athletics led in 2014-15 to the most fruitful year in department history, has been rewarded for his efforts with the Cascade Conference Athletic Director of the Year award, the league office announced Friday.
The announcement comes a day after SOU landed at No. 6 in the final NAIA Learfield Sports Directors' Cup standings, the top finish ever by an institution representing the CCC. Sayre, the first Raider AD to win the award since Shirley Huyett shared it in 1996, will be put forth as the conference's nomination for NAIA Athletic Director of the Year.
In his fifth year as head of the department, Sayre watched every Raider program advance to the postseason for the first time in school history, introduced the first two new sports at SOU since 2000, oversaw two major facility renovation projects and helped SOU break athletics fundraising records for the third year in a row.
"The honor speaks to the quality of our student-athletes and the high standards held by our coaches," Sayre said. "It was a great year for SOU athletics and we're all humbled by the attention we're getting and thank the Cascade Conference family."
SOU's ascent in the national ranks correlates directly with the appointment of Sayre, who spent 18 months as the interim athletic director before taking over in earnest in May 2010. The department's finishes in the NAIA Directors' Cup – which awards points based on performances at the NAIA Championships across the board – in the five years prior to him taking over were 88th, 47th, 57th, 100th and 92nd. In the last five years the Raiders have taken 29th, 27th, 18th, 32nd and sixth.
Nine of 11 Raider teams competed at the NAIA Championships this season, and eight of them finished in the top-15 of their final NAIA rankings. The football team won its first national title four years removed from a stretch in which it lost 47 of 66 games; the wrestling team was the NAIA runner-up for the fifth time in seven years; the men's cross country team was second in the NAIA for the third straight season, and the women were 18th after a three-year absence from the national meet; the volleyball team won a conference title and had one of its best finishes at the national level (13th) in program history; the men's basketball team reached its second-ever NAIA quarterfinals, while the women won their first NAIA tournament game since 1999; SOU track and field produced eight All-American performances and two champions; and the softball team, under a first-year coach, won more games than it had in any year since 2005.
In all, there were 25 NAIA All-Americans, the seventh four-time wrestling champ in NAIA history (Brock Gutches), the first NAIA Football Player of the Year (Austin Dodge) in school history, and SOU's second female track and field champ in the last 20 years.
Sayre's standards for Raider student-athletes in the classroom have led to a department grade-point average this school year of 3.2. Eighty-nine Raiders were named to Academic All-Conference teams, 31 were Daktronics-NAIA Scholar Athletes and four were Capital One Academic All-Americans. He also required every student-athlete to complete at least 10 hours of community service.
During the fall, Sayre's efforts led to the unveiling of new artificial field turf at Raider Stadium, and this spring it was paired with a new track that allowed SOU to host the CCC Track and Field Championships for the first time in 12 years. Construction is set to begin this August on a complete remodel of McNeal Hall, which will include a new competition gym, locker rooms, meeting rooms, offices and athletic training rooms.
Sayre, along with Associate Athletic Director Bobby Heiken, brought in over $750,000 this year in scholarship, sponsorship and individual sport fundraising. The annual Lithia/Raider Club Shootout golf tournament continues to be one of the top fundraising tournaments in the nation and this year raised over $350,000 for a new record.
The SOU athletic department will expand under Sayre's direction in 2015-16 with the addition of men's soccer and women's wrestling. In just two years, the total number of SOU student-athletes will have grown from 270 to more than 430.
A native of Lacey, Wash., Sayre graduated with a bachelor's degree in English from Western Washington University, where he passed for 1,490 yards as a senior on the football team. He arrived at SOU in 1995 as an offensive assistant for the football team and began a six-year stint as offensive coordinator in 1998, helping the Raiders average 33 points per contest during that span. A long-standing instructor for health and physical education, he earned a master's degree from SOU in 2001.
Sayre took over as the head football coach at College of the Siskiyous in 2004 and returned to Ashland a year later. In 2006, he began serving as an assistant and associate athletic director.
He and his wife, Kouba, have two children: Rieger and Koura.