This is the second in a three-part series examining the financial state of the Cornell Athletics Department.

Every year when the calendar turns to July 1, the Cornell Athletics Department faces the daunting task of raising millions of dollars in alumni donations. For the fiscal year 2010, that target number amounted to $3.3 million, which the department exceeded by $500,000.

However, as Athletics Director Andy Noel explained, “The reason why it’s not a tedious job is because the folks that are supporting the teams really love the teams, and love the programs and what athletics mean to the University.”

“It’s not like you’re trying to sell used cars,” he added. 

Contributions typically range from $25 to $100,000, though as Noel pointed out, “Usually when someone gives $100,000, they’re giving it to a project.” 

Capital projects include the current boathouse repairs and expansion and the Lynah Rink renovation of a few years ago. The outdoor track is also scheduled to be resurfaced within the year, which Noel estimates will cost in the vicinity of $300,000 to $400,000. 

Just as wide-ranging as the pledge amounts, however, are the alumni who have proved some of the department’s most loyal benefactors. 

Some are former student-athletes who went on to play professionally, others enjoyed their Cornell experience from the stands and now sit on the Board of Trustees, and some — as the NCAA motto goes — “went pro in something other than sports.” 

Marsha Dodson Morton ’75, who provided the major gift for the new field hockey surface and irrigation system that debuted two years ago, has been giving to the Athletics Department since she graduated, and 10 years ago set up an athletic endowment fund for women’s athletics.

Dodson Morton arrived at Cornell in 1971 to play tennis for the University and “was rather shocked to find out that the women’s program ... was distinctly different from the men’s.”

While the men were allowed to use the brand new tennis courts by what were once called Alumni Fields, the women were made to practice on the old courts next to Risley Hall. 

This was a far cry from Dodson Morton’s experience in high school, where she played on the boys’ team and both sexes shared the same tennis courts. 

“I think [it was] more a reflection of the time period of the early 70s as opposed to discrimination on the part of Cornell. It was just kind of how things were,” she said. 

Dodson Morton does not know when this practice came to an end, but acknowledged it was still going on when she finished graduate school at Cornell in 1977. 

“Women’s varsity sports at Cornell were very limited, and I kind of walked away with — as much as I loved Cornell ... it always left a bad taste for me, that I felt like a second-class citizen in that regard,” she said. 

According to Dodson Morton, the field hockey team historically had to practice in Schoellkopf — sometimes as late as 11:15 p.m. due to the fact that the football and men’s lacrosse teams had preference. 

“When the University came to me and said that the women’s field hockey team didn’t have a place to play ... it just kind of brought back those old memories of ‘You can’t play on the good courts,’” she said. “It was a way for me to sort of erase a not so good memory and replace it with a positive one — that the women now have a state of the art field hockey field, where they deserve to be playing, and that’s why I did it.”

Former New York Giant Peter Gogolak ’64 came to the United States as a teenager from Hungary, having never seen a football game before. He used his skills as a soccer player, though, to become a kicker on Cornell’s football team. 

Gogolak was the first to pioneer “soccer style” placekicking in college football and explained that, for him, “everything started at Cornell.” 

“Cornell gave me an opportunity to kind of overlook my verbal SAT scores and basically ... my sports career started there as a freshman, I was the kicker on the Cornell team, then I moved on to the pros,” he said. 

For many years after his graduation, Gogolak did not follow Cornell’s sports teams, but became more interested as he got older. The Giants’ all-time leading scorer now watches most of the football and lacrosse teams’ games via RedCast subscription, and has made his way to several East Coast games. 

“I like to see success, and Cornell was in the bottom of the Ivy League for many, many years; I’m talking about all sports — especially football and basketball — the two major sports,” Gogolak said. “Then I guess with the arrival of Andy Noel and some other things, suddenly Cornell athletics starts improving and basically then I started following.”

Gogolak admitted he was “very proud when four teams last spring [were] going for the national title ... at one school.”

“It’s a high,” he added. “It’s a high for alumni.”

Gogolak estimated that he has been donating to the department for the last 12 to 15 years, which coincided with Noel’s arrival as an associate A.D. and a palpable turnaround in Cornell’s athletic performance. He mentioned that the past seven to eight years have seen his donations increase due to him witnessing this “great success” in Cornell sports. 

“I’m very proud of producing successful teams, and ... Cornell is so successful [at] producing successful alumni ... I was kind of disappointed when you have successful teams [and] cannot keep your coaches,” Gogolak said. “You reward success, and these great coaches like [Jeff] Tambroni and [Steve] Donahue — these guys come around maybe once in a generation, and so I was very disappointed that Cornell couldn’t keep them.”

That being said, he has liked what he has seen this year from the wrestling team and other programs, especially his former affiliate. 

“I think football, with the new coach — it’s the first time I see some real progress, and I understand the freshman class came in and it’s going to be a terrific one, so I’m very optimistic about football season this year, because we haven’t had a good one for years,” Gogolak said. 

This sentiment was shared by Mike Troy ’81, a former Cornell baseball and rugby player who recently retired from his job at Goldman Sachs after 27 years and will be teaching a weekly one-credit AEM course on securities markets beginning March 15. 

“I recently had a dinner with Kent Austin in New York City, and he’s obviously trying to bring back the winning ways to Cornell football,” said Troy, who also keeps abreast of the baseball team.

“[Head coach] Bill Walkenbach ’98 is very good about sending around very lengthy email messages to alums to keep up with the team and how they’re doing; everything from recruiting, to the schedule ... to the strengths and weaknesses of the team, etc.,” Troy said.

Like Gogolak, Troy has noticed an improvement in Cornell Athletics over the last decade or so, and attributes that success in part to Noel. 

“Under his leadership ... we’ve won something like 57 Ivy League titles in the last eight or nine years, and in the prior eight or nine years it was something like six or seven or eight [titles],” Troy said. “The performance of the teams has really been terrific, and Andy has hired great coaches.”

Troy, who has been donating for several years, has given to the renovation of Hoy Field, the stadium seating in Newman Arena and to financial aid as well. 

“I try to balance my giving to the University in general, to financial aid, to Athletics in particular, and I lean on some various people in development for advice about how best to do that,” he said. 

And of course, Troy shares much in common with current Cornell students and alumni alike. 

“I follow the teams very closely and I poke fun at friends of mine who went to Harvard and other Ivy League safety schools whenever I can, when Cornell wins,” he said with a laugh. 

For Jan Rock Zubrow ’77, her connection to the Cornell athletics scene was a little different from that of Dodson Morton, Gogolak and Troy. 

“As an undergraduate, I was a fan,” she said. 

Rock Zubrow, who became a trustee in 1999 and has been giving to the department for “easily 10 years,” co-chaired a task force that studied Cornell’s athletic performance over the past 20 years. One of the recommendations that resulted from the campaign was to raise significant funds for Athletics. 

Through this initiative, Rock Zubrow became connected to the softball team, which she has donated to over the years, naming the head coach position. 

“I just thought the world of Dick Blood, and I have no affiliation with softball other than I really enjoy the coach and I wanted to support women’s athletics,” she said, adding that “it’s a terrific team and a terrific group of women.”

Although Rock Zubrow does not make it to very many games, she follows the team and has gotten to know a few of the players and served as a mentor. 

“Our alumni have just been fabulous over time ... They’re so much fun, and they’re so reinforcing,” Noel concluded. “Annual fundraising is ... a huge part of our existence [and] is something I feel really committed to, because I don’t ever want to not have our programs have the critical things that they need to excel.”