James Jackson/MDN Kevin Forde meeting with the public and the media as part of his interview process for the Director of Athletics position at Minot State.

While it might be summertime at Minot State, which is supposed to be a slower season, the Athletics Department has been all systems go lately. Last week, they spent time working on fixing the bubble. This week and next week, they are pushing forward with interviews of the four finalists for the Director of Athletics position.

Kevin Forde is one of those finalists, and he met with the public and the media on Friday, his first time doing so during his interview process with MSU. On Thursday, Brock Weppler had his opportunity and Weppler is the only internal finalist. Forde is the first of three external candidates to speak publicly in a press conference setting.

Forde comes from a background with direct experience working as a Director of Athletics. He spent two years working as the AD at Wheeling Jesuit University in Wheeling, W.V. and served as the Interim AD at Saint Xavier University in Chicago, Ill.

He has not held a position like this since Jan. 2022, however, he believes Minot State is a great fit and an appealing destination for his next stop. “Dr. Shirley is a superstar. He’s well known in the NCAA world. He knows athletics and he gets it. He is someone that I would like to be associated with.”

Additionally, Forde believes that MSU is currently sitting in a good spot, even though there is always room for improvement. “I’m really happy with where they are at administratively and athletically, and we need to keep building on that and developing our coaches. We need to not only recruit the best talent we can, but also develop it,” Forde told the public and the media.

“We will work to be a center of excellence and create a strong sense of pride among Beaver Nation,” Forde mentioned in his introductory segment. The areas of importance Forde believes can help him attain that goal of excellence and pride involve student athlete experience, championship level programs, athletic facilities, and external outreach.

For the student athlete experience, Forde expressed an emphasis on providing support to student-athletes not just on the playing field, but in the classroom as well. “We want to graduate champions. We want to provide them with the resources to achieve their degree at MSU and prepare them for the future when they move on,” Forde said.

In addition to support outside of the playing field, Forde wants to work with a student advisory committee where he will meet with them weekly. In those meetings, he hopes to discuss any questions or concerns the student-athletes have regarding athletics or any ongoing issues they have in general.

From an academic standpoint, he wants to set the expectation that the overall Athletics Department GPA will be a 3.0 or better. Forde mentioned that their most recent GPA was slightly above that already, so he feels like he can raise the bar even higher, and he believes they will still achieve that goal.

By building championship level programs, he wants the Beavers to annually be competitive in the NSIC conference in all sports. “We want to consistently compete for conference championships,” he said.

How he will achieve that will start by meeting with all coaches individually. He believes in building programs the right way and that requires setting sport-specific strategies and goals. The development of athletes is not the only area Forde wants to focus on. He believes that development of the coaching staff is of vital importance to athletic success too.

“Maintaining and building the staff is important. The coaching staff needs development just like the athletes so they can learn and grow in their profession. We want to give them the opportunity to have success and move on elsewhere if they are presented with the opportunity,” Forde said.

Beyond competing for conference championships, another goal of Forde’s is to have MSU be one of the top programs in the NCAA. To meet that goal, however, he understands that the Beavers must first be consistently competitive within their conference.

Kevin Forde believes that building activities bring excitement and life to campus. While he spoke highly of the facilities at MSU, he ensured that he would like to keep improving the facilities every year through both big projects and small projects, and he wants to make sure he has his hands on all current campus projects.

Keeping the alumni, fans and families happy and informed is also of vital importance to Forde. He wants to take an innovative approach to increase fan engagement, as well as create a fun family atmosphere at sporting events.

One idea he has in keeping alumni involved would be to implement an alumni spotlight every month. This would entail having one alumni member come in for an interview each month and having the interview posted on the website. This gives way for alumni to be frequently featured and gives them a reason to come back to campus.

In the end, Kevin Forde believes that he can help turn Minot State into a destination and that requires developing the athletes, as well as the coaches. He believes that Minot State can maximize their talent pool if student-athletes and coaches look at it as a destination.

The Director of Athletics interviews will continue next week with Dan Artamenko set to speak on Monday, June 27 and Kip Meyer set to speak on Wednesday, June 29. Both appearances will take place at 2 p.m. at the MSU Student Center.