Inside Athletics: Lynnette Johnson

OleMissSports.com's Inside Athletics is a biweekly blog by the Ole Miss athletics department's senior administrators and key personnel to offer fans added insight into the overall operation of the department.

It is a great time to be a part of Ole Miss Athletics, and it is a privilege to work on a day-to-day basis with our athletics programs.  To be designated a Division IA intercollegiate athletics program by the NCAA, a university must have a minimum of 14 sports. Ole Miss has 18 intercollegiate programs, and as Senior Associate Athletic Director/Senior Women’s Administrator, it is my role as a sport administrator to work with 15 of our programs and their head coaches on daily operations issues, such as budget, compliance, facilities, gender equity and various other internal operations including SEC, NCAA and University meetings. The women’s programs I work with are basketball, volleyball, tennis, indoor and outdoor track and field, cross country, golf, soccer, softball and rifle.  The men’s programs are indoor and outdoor track and field, golf, cross country and tennis.

We have fantastic head coaches and student-athletes with each of these programs. The effort and commitment that they make to their programs is shown in the adjectives used to describe them: Western Division Champions, SEC Champions, NCAA Individual Champions, NCAA participants, All-SEC, Sweet Sixteen Participants, Elite Eight participants, Academic and Athletic All-Americans, Taylor Medalist, Honor Society, and SEC Coach of the Year.

The student-athletes and coaches put so much hard work and time into their sports. Most fans don’t see the behind the scenes effort of our coaches and athletes during their practice, film, travel and recruiting time. The NCAA rules allow student-athletes to practice and train in the off-season up to eight hours per week and in-season up to 20 hours per week with one day off. Student-athletes are filling up their entire days between class, practice and study time, sometimes hoping to just get lunch. They have to prepare to travel during their competition season by communicating with their professors and being ahead of their game in class work.  Travel time does not count in the 20-hour rule, and as you know, loading up a bus to drive to an event or getting to the airport in plenty of time to catch a flight can be very time-consuming and our programs are representing Ole Miss all over the country.  Last year alone, our teams competed in 27 states and the Bahamas. It is a great opportunity for our Alumni all over the country to watch our teams compete and represent our University.

As we move into our spring sport season, I invite you out to experience all of our Ole Miss athletics programs. 

Lynnette Johnson

Ole Miss Senior Associate Athletics Director

Past Articles

	12/05/2007	Inside Athletics: Karen Schiferl
	11/24/2007	Inside Athletics: Blake Barnes
	11/06/2007	Inside Athletics: David Wells
	10/17/2007	Inside Athletics: John Hartwell
	10/05/2007	Inside Athletics: Sans Russell
	09/24/2007	Inside Athletics: Walker Jones
	09/05/2007	Inside Athletics: George Smith
	09/05/2007	OleMissSports.com Launches Athletics Blog

The University of Mississippi Athletics

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