When Bradley’s Athletic Director Michael Cross announced his resignation Feb. 16, he also announced the end of a five-year tenure during which Bradley’s athletic department underwent numerous changes.
In an interview with The Scout, Cross said he believed his time at Bradley, which he announced will end on March 16 at the conclusion of the women’s Missouri Valley Conference (MVC) basketball tournament, could be described as prosperous.
“My time at Bradley has been one of continual daily growth and improvement,” Cross said. “The day I arrived… [Renaissance Coliseum] didn’t exist, our core values didn’t exist, [and] we were trying to figure out how to become competitive in lots of different things.”
The growth that Cross mentions is one he said he measures not only by athletic success, but also by the success in the classroom.
“We’ve just come off another semester of record GPAs,” Cross said. “I look and [say] it’s been an incredible process of growth and moving our performance upward in the standings of the MVC across all sports.”
Student-athletes broke academic records that were set in the 2014 spring semester by posting a 2014 Fall semester GPA of 3.31.
Along with the establishment of the Renaissance Coliseum and the record student-athlete GPAs in the classroom, Cross was also behind the implementation of Bradley’s mascot, KaBoom!.
However, even with those accomplishments and a list of others, Cross said that his defining moment came at the beginning of the 2013-2014 academic year.
“Every year we start out the year with an opening meeting [consisting] of all of our student athletes and staff,” Cross said. “We had our student athlete population and all of our coaching staff and administrative staff in Neumiller Lecture Hall.”
Cross said that his opening meetings are usually upbeat ones which focus on the positives of the year prior. However, this speech was the opposite.
“I spent 45 minutes talking about our values, talking about where I felt like we were not performing at the standards we needed to perform at, that we’re not as focused as we needed to be,” Cross said. “[The meeting was] not very public, but the cumulative results that came out of that conversation I’m proud of, and glad we took the steps that we did.”
Those steps that Cross mentions included two conference titles won and the postseason appearances his teams made in the 2013-2014. However, in his full tenure, Cross has enjoyed many athletic achievements.
From January 2010 to February 2015, athletic teams under Cross have won four MVC conference titles and have advanced to seven postseason tournaments.
With his achievements in front of him and with his administration about to end, Cross said he believes Bradley is in a better place than when he arrived on the Hilltop.
“There’s no question that [Bradley Athletics is] better, absolutely,” Cross said. “By any statistical measure you choose, we’re better.”
