WSU President Don Beggs looked within the Shocker community to fill the vacancy created by the departure of Jim Schaus for Ohio University. Schaus had served as athletic director for the past nine years.
And Beggs found just the person he was looking for: Eric Sexton ’87/92.
During an early April news conference held to introduce Sexton as athletic director, Beggs said, “I compare this athletic program to a car engine. It’s running well right now, and I don’t want the oil to dry up in it.”
Citing Sexton’s long playlist of accomplishments, most recently as executive director for government relations and board of trustees at WSU, Beggs is confident in his hire. Officially on the job since April 23, Sexton himself is taking his bearings and gearing up for the drive ahead. Although a key WSU administrator with 18 years of experience, including leading Wichita State to the distinction of being 15th in the nation this year in directed federal appropriations for university programs, the AD position represents a major jog in the career road for him.
While he learns the nuts and bolts of his new job, he plans, he says, “to do way more listening than talking,” adding that he has great respect for the athletic staff members and coaches he now directs. “It’s not about me,” he emphasizes. “I’m interested in what’s best for the whole.”
Shocker alumni who know and have worked with him on past projects agree with Beggs that Sexton is the right person for the job. Steve Boleski ’85, an alumni association board member and former president of the Shocker Athletic Scholarship Organization, says, “Eric is a people person who brings a lot of excitement to the program. I think one of the greatest things is the legacy he brings, starting as a student-athlete.”
A two-time All-Missouri Valley Conference standout on the WSU golf team during his undergraduate years, 1984-87, Sexton is the son of Shocker football legend, civic leader and 1977 WSU Alumni Achievement Award honoree Linwood ’48 and the late Delores ’53 Sexton of Halstead, Kan.
He is married to Kathy (Bradshaw) Sexton ’88/89, a past president of the alumni association and city manager of Derby, Kan. In 2002, the couple was awarded the association’s Young Alumni Award for their professional achievements and public service.
His parents, he says, were the ones who tuned him in to the importance of community involvement — of, as he puts it, “reaching out and identifying ways to serve.” His ways of serving are legion and, while often targeting WSU support organizations such as the alumni association and SASO, also range from participation in everything from the Kansas Golf Foundation and the FundaMental Learning Center, to the Sedgwick County Zoo board and the Red Cross. Making time for public service, work and family is a challenge, but Sexton says he’s taken a cue from his father: “He told me, ‘Eric, you can sleep when you don’t have anything else to do.’”
Linwood Sexton relates, “We take care of business around here twenty-four seven.” And it’s perfectly clear he means the business of life, broad-ranging as that is.
His son’s national involvements include being McConnell AFB’s nominee to the Joint Civilian Orientation Conference, slated to take place this fall. And in 2002, Sexton was a presidential appointee to the commission set up to help develop legislation for the creation of a national museum devoted to the documentation of African American life.
The National Museum of African American History and Culture (which could open in 2011) became a future reality on Dec. 19, 2003, when President Bush signed into law legislation establishing it as part of the Smithsonian Institution. “I was honored to be appointed,” Sexton relates. “Before you can move forward, you have to know who you are.”
That, as Sexton knows, is an insight applicable in many other realms, including Shocker sports. And that brings us back to one of Beggs’ determining qualifications for the AD post: being a Shocker.
Few WSU personalities have had as many opportunities to see Wichita State and learn its history from as many perspectives as Sexton, making him the go-to man to precision tune WSU athletics.
And Special for The Shocker's online edition…
Before being named athletic director, Eric Sexton served as executive director for government relations and the board of trustees at Wichita State, a position in which he worked to build relationships with elected and appointed officials at the local, state and federal levels for the purpose of advancing university finances to provide for academic and research needs. Sexton also worked closely behind the scenes with many of the university's major donors. At the heart of his job was – and remains – articulating the value and uniqueness of WSU to diverse individuals.
“For 18 years, Eric has worked to develop positive relationships with people external to the university,” President Beggs says. “He has participated in the hiring of several coaches and in 2005 served as chair of our successful NCAA certification process. He is the right person to lead the athletic department.”
Beggs, WSU alumnus Boleski and others say Sexton brings many talents and credentials to the AD position. Among the most important is the fact he is a Shocker. As Boleski puts it: “He went to college here, he played golf here, he works here.” Sexton himself defines “being a Shocker” as acting from a foundation of “respect for our institution – respect for our history.”
Sexton’s understanding of Wichita State and its history is deep, as well as broad. Citing up-to-the-semester statistics and anecdotes of success from university colleges and departments ranging from engineering to fine arts, he proves he’s knowledgeable about the current lay of the campus. Through the years, many WSU administrators and faculty members have guided his thoughts and actions, he says. He mentions three administrators in particular: Don Beggs, who he describes as a “great leader”; Warren Armstrong, the late former WSU president whose academic outreach and service impressed Sexton; and the late Fred Sudermann ‘58/60, a former WSU vice president of research, governmental and industry relations, from whom Sexton says he learned much of his former job.
Sexton’s dad also shared with his only son stories of his own experiences at the University of Wichita, where he was a star football player in the 1940s. Linwood was one of the first black athletes to compete in the Missouri Valley Conference at a time when segregation sometimes barred him from sharing meals, staying at the same hotels and even traveling to certain away games with his Shocker teammates.
“It all depended on where you went," the elder Sexton relates. "I could never even go to Tulsa or West Texas State." Yet he adds, “Those were terrific times, though, because we knew that if we were to get out of the minority doldrums of segregation that education was the most important thing. We felt blessed to be getting an education."
That message came through loud and clear to Eric, who earned a master's degree in public administration in 1992 and a bachelor's degree in business administration in 1987, both from WSU. From 1984 to 1987, he was a student-athlete and two-time All-Missouri Valley Conference honoree on the Shocker golf team. He graduated with honors and, in 1985, was awarded WSU’s 16th annual Glen E. Gardner Memorial Prize, which recognizes a junior minority student for outstanding university and community citizenship achievements. In 2002, Sexton received a doctorate in political science from the University of Kansas.
Eric says his parents gave him many lifelong gifts, key among them an understanding of "the value of thinking broader than yourself." Sexton's dad, Linwood, emphasizes that one of the guiding principles for members of the Sexton family is "that you treat everyone alike.” That is, he adds, until they "tear their pants.” He relates that Eric acts naturally by this philosophy, treating the many people with whom he comes in contact with the same attention and the same level of respect – until they behave in such a way that a change is warranted.
In the work realm, Sexton says he’s proud that Wichita State – through academic offerings, research initiatives and service outreach – continues to grow and play a “more and more integral role in the community.” On the personal front, he says he’s the proud uncle of a number of nieces and nephews. During a recent weekend road trip, one of them, he says with a smile, turned to him and said, “Uncle E., you have the brain of a kid.”
It was, Sexton says, one of the best compliments he’s ever gotten.
Sexton Trivia
Secret Talent:
Knowing the lyrics to an unbelievable number of classic TV sitcom theme songs.
Quote:
“The best job is the job that needs to be done.”
Summer Jobs:
Wichita Park Board assistant supervisor and scorekeeper (1983-86), WSU Golf Course sales clerk (1982-83)
Blast from the Past:
From a 1986 university announcement about his being named to the WSU Athletic Director’s Honor Roll:
“Eric Sexton is a student athlete who exemplifies the (Lew) Perkins philosophy of collegiate athletics. Sexton, a senior majoring in business, has appeared on the Athletic Director’s Honor Roll four consecutive semesters, including a perfect 4.0 grade point average in the spring of 1986.
“Sexton, the son of Shocker Hall of Famer Linwood Sexton, also is exceptional on the golf course. His third-place finish helped Rod Nuckoll’s golf squad to the 1986 Missouri Valley Conference Golf Championship. In May, Sexton finished second to Nuckolls in the local U.S. Open Qualifying Tournament and advanced to the regional qualifier in Houston. Last month, he reached the semifinal round of the Kansas State Amateur Gold Championship before losing to eventual champion, Greg Towne.”
