Rookies will learn the ropes at USSA's June camp

Reading, writing, arithmetic and rookies. USSA’s Todd Wyant has all that and then some on his mind as the summer rolls along and the clock ticks toward Vancouver.
    Reached during the final day of the annual USSA Congress in mid-May, Wyant, the associate athletic director of athlete services, touched on the upcoming second installment of the USSA Rookie Camp, slated for June 19-21 in Park City. All first-year USSA athletes will go through the camp that will include an etiquette dinner, advice from a dietitian to maintain healthy eating habits while on the road competing, and guidance about agents and sponsors and what it takes to become an elite athlete.
    “It’s basically an orientation for USSA, we’ll talk about the opportunities for them,” Wyant said. “We’ll run [the rookies] down the Olympic Park bobsled run as a fun event to get them involved.”
READING, WRITING, arithmetic and rookies. USSA’s Todd Wyant has all that and then some on his mind as the summer rolls along and the clock ticks toward Vancouver.
    Reached during the final day of the annual USSA Congress in mid-May, Wyant, the associate athletic director of athlete services, touched on the upcoming second installment of the USSA Rookie Camp, slated for June 19-21 in Park City. All first-year USSA athletes will go through the camp that will include an etiquette dinner, advice from a dietitian to maintain healthy eating habits while on the road competing, and guidance about agents and sponsors and what it takes to become an elite athlete.
    “It’s basically an orientation for USSA, we’ll talk about the opportunities for them,” Wyant said. “We’ll run [the rookies] down the Olympic Park bobsled run as a fun event to get them involved.”
    Wyant said he thought last summer’s rookie camp was a successful beginning in trying to assist young athletes with the time management and other demands they will face as a high level USSA athlete. Wyant’s next goal?
    “We’re hoping in the future to maybe do something for the parents and try to get them more involved, but we’re moving forward,” he said. “I think the Center of Excellence is going to be huge, and we’ll be in there in less than a year which will allow me to be closer to the athletes as they’re working out because [the 2010 Olympics] are coming up fast.”
    On the education front, many USSA athletes, both current and former, are utilizing the organization’s contract with Salt Lake City’s Westminster College. Wyant said the contract with the school has been extended allowing athletes to attend at little or no cost. And now, Wyant said, retired USSA athletes can work toward a degree as long as they started the program when they were an elite athlete in the organization.
    “To me it just didn’t make sense that you can go and knock off six credits or something [as an active athlete] and then you retire and don’t get that benefit anymore when that’s the best time to go to college,” Wyant said. “The extension of the contract is huge because we’re getting more and more people involved and they’re excited about it.”
    “Todd has taken this program that was in its infancy and expanded it to the point now where we’ve tripled the number of athletes in the Westminster program,” said USSA COO Dick Coe.
    Coe added that Wyant is a key part of USSA’s attempt to bolster a better program that will help athletes transition out of an athletic career and into another profession through education and mentoring programs. To that end, Wyant said he plans to hold what he called “office hours” on the road with the athletes this coming season. He plans to be fully set up with all types of college reference books, application forms and the like so athletes can help prepare themselves for post-competition life. He also plans on stocking a resource center for athletes in the new Center of Excellence, slated to open next March.
    “What you really want to do is make it a full-service organization so that when an athlete leaves this organization he or she can look back and say I did my best, I gave it a shot, I stood on the podium, I was a world champion, I was an Olympian and guess what, now I have a career ahead of me also,” Coe said. “That allows all those athletes to maybe give back to the organization later on in life, whether it’s as a spokesman or something else they can do.”