Sinclair Community College Athletic Director Jack Giambrone doesn’t like to lose.
“I don’t tell [men’s basketball coach Jeff] Price to get close,” Giambrone said. “I tell him to win. I want to win.”
He said he likes hearing the things that baseball coach Steve Dintaman said prior to the start of the baseball season about the goal of his club being to win a national championship.
“As a coach, our job is to win,” Giambrone said.
However, Giambrone also makes it clear that in order to win, other things must happen.
“If you don’t do school as a serious commitment, you don’t play,” Giambrone said.
Student-athletes at Sinclair are expected to be active in the community and successful in the classroom, according to Giambrone. If they fail in either regard, they won’t play. Giambrone said that during recruiting, the school will not pursue a student-athlete who shows a disinterest in school.
“We don’t want to win and then sacrifice the community or grades,” Giambrone said. “They have to take care of business. They need to be well-balanced. This is big boy and big girl school.”
Giambrone, who coached football at Otterbein University, Eastern Kentucky University, NFL Europe and Wittenberg University, said he does miss some of the aspects of coaching.
“I miss the hands-on aspects of coaching,” Giambrone said. “I miss watching the kids grow. I miss bringing out the best in them.”
Being a coach and a teacher are inherently similar, and Giambrone said he sees aspects of his coaching in the way he teaches his Sports and Recreational Management classes. He also said his first commitment is to his classes.
“The question we ask is, how do we get [the students] prepared?” Giambrone said. “We want our kids to succeed in anything.”
Giambrone said his predecessor, Norma Dyrus, was a big influence on him. She “taught me the right way to do things,” he said. Part of his responsibility is to his coaches, too.
“I ask coaches, what do you need to win a national championship?” Giambrone said.
That, he said, fits into the motto of the college to “find a need and endeavor to meet it.”
“We align our goals with those of the college,” Giambrone said. “We just do it through sports.”
Because of budget cuts in the last few years, the Athletic Department had to drop a few sports. Giambrone said that eventually he’d like to add women’s softball, men’s and women’s golf (which was cut) and men’s and women’s soccer.
Giambrone is also concerned with building the brand of Sinclair athletics. He credits the Marketing Department for developing the new logo, but said it comes down to the student-athletes.
“We want to be highlighted for the right reasons,” Giambrone said. “We want people to know sports are here.”