My name is Sandra Roland. I'm a five-foot-ten, blonde-haired and green-eyed, somewhat stocky but still good-looking, thirty-something lady of French-Canadian and Irish descent living in the city of Brockton, Massachusetts. I work as athletic director of Kingman College in Chestnut Hill, Massachusetts. It's a tough commute, driving from Brockton to Chestnut Hill everyday but I like what I do. I'm the first female athletic director the school has ever been. And both students and faculty have been thrilled with my performance so far. I just hope they don't discover what I've been doing behind closed doors. Cause it could mean the end of me.
When I took the helm of the Kingman College in 2003, the school was in complete disarray. Kingman College is a small private school with only about eleven thousand students. Yet it was a maelstrom of trouble in its own right. Fortunately, I knew what I was doing. You see, my father, Sanders Roland used to be a college football coach and athletic director before he retired. He taught me all he knew about sports, and collegiate politics. My first major decision as athletic director was to whip the Department of Athletics into shape. I had my work cut out for me. The previous athletic director, Marshall Stephens was a beloved administrator right until his untimely death in the summer of 2003. As his replacement, I wasn't exactly made welcome.
Gradually, I won them over, though. In 2003, the student body of Kingman College was seriously imbalanced. Seventy five percent of the students were female. Once a college has reached that point, it ceases to be interesting to both male and female applicants. I found a way to restore balance to the student body and boost the school's reputation across the country. I talked to the board of directors about the possibility of adding football. I must say they were all surprised. Female athletic directors aren't known for adding men's sports as the first order of business when they come on the job in colleges and universities across America. Many male directors wouldn't have been so bold but whatever.
After an eternity of political arm-wrestling, the school board agreed. They forked over three million dollars, and I was allowed to do what I wanted. The first thing I did was renovate the old football stadium. Kingman College hasn't had a football team since 1959. They did away with it because it was too expensive. The old football stadium was used for various activities by the school's sports teams. The men's and women's soccer teams, along with the men's and women's lacrosse teams used it. The field hockey team used it as well. It cost over a million to fix the damn thing. Eventually, though, I got it done. Then I began looking for a coach for the team. My dad's good friend, NFL legend Patrick Henderson, had plenty of good ideas. He helped me recruit football players from high schools around New England. Together, we went to speak at Brockton Community High School, Boston College High School and many others. The top high school football players of the region, that's who we wanted to recruit. If the inaugural football team wasn't successful, the school board would use that as an excuse to give the football program the ax. And I couldn't fail at my first test. It simply wouldn't be good form.