Gladchuk Named AD At Naval Academy - The Washington Post

University of Houston athletic director Chet Gladchuk was namedathletic director at the Naval Academy yesterday at a news conferencein Annapolis. Gladchuk replaces Jack Lengyel, who retired in Julyafter 13 years.

The retirement of Lengyel becomes official when he returns fromvacation Oct. 1. Capt. Kevin Sinnett, Navy's deputy director ofathletics, will be the interim athletic director. Gladchuk said helikely will be in Annapolis full-time by the third week in September.

Terms of Gladchuk's contract were not announced.

'Wherever I have been, I feel like I have achieved goals,' saidGladchuk, who became Navy's third AD in 33 years. 'I felt this wasthe time to move on and take on a new challenge.'

One of those goals appears to be joining a conference for theMidshipmen football team, which has maintained its status as anindependent for over a century.

'Conference affiliation is very much in our future,' Gladchuksaid. 'It may be dictated as much by external circumstances as byinternal ones.'

Naval Academy Superintendent Vice Adm. John Ryan also addressedthe possibility of ending the football team's independence. In mostother sports, the Midshipmen are a member of the Patriot League.

'The Naval Academy probably belongs in a football league,' Ryansaid. 'With the Atlantic Coast Conference and Big East, we want to becandidates to join either league.'

Gladchuk, 51, a native of Amherst, Mass., graduated from BostonCollege with honors with a degree in business management in 1973. Healso won three letters playing center for the football team.

He was athletic director at Tulane from 1987 to 1990 and at BostonCollege from 1990 to 1997.

He helped reinstate Tulane's basketball team to Division I statusafter it had been discontinued following a point-shaving scandal. Healso was athletic director at Boston College when the school firstjoined the Big East for football in 1991.

He was at Boston College during the tumult of a gambling scandalduring the 1996 football season. Thirteen players were suspended forgambling; two players, it was discovered, had bet against the Eagles.Five players later were reinstated.

Gladchuk went to Houston from Boston College, signing a six-yeardeal in July 1997. While at Houston he was sued twice for racialdiscrimination, the first time in December 2000 and the other lastJuly. Both lawsuits are still pending.

The academy interviewed six candidates for the job. The candidateswere selected by Eastman and Bodine, a Plano, Tex.-based executivesearch firm that also had conducted athletic director searches forVanderbilt, Duke, Virginia Tech and Miami, among others.

It also is the firm that listed Gladchuk as one of the finalistsfor the Houston job in 1997.

'If I cannot deliver the enthusiasm I feel today every day,'Gladchuk said, 'it will be time for me to stop and let someone elsetake over the reins here. Right now, it is full speed ahead.'