On a campus where many faculty and staff wear multiple hats, Bret Billhardt likely has one of the biggest. Anyone who has seen Wittenberg’s senior associate director of athletics for operations and compliance in action would certainly agree that he lives up to that advance billing.
Billhardt juggles numerous tasks and duties in support of Wittenberg’s 26 intercollegiate athletics teams and the hundreds of student-athletes on their rosters. His position involves full days, some late nights, and plenty of busy weekends. So it may come as a surprise that he added some additional duties in recent years.
Billhardt has served on the NCAA Division III Women’s Golf National Committee since 2019, and he is culminating his four-year appointment as the committee’s chairperson for the 2022-23 school year. That means Billhardt’s Super Bowl is fast approaching as he prepares to spend a week at the Mission Inn Resort in Howey-in-the-Hills, Florida, from May 6-13. He says that the five committee members and an NCAA liaison “run the entire championship, from walk-through day to the awards ceremony on the final day.”
Chairing the committee is a fitting way to cap Billhardt’s tenure, which started with preparations for the 2020 national championships that were ultimately canceled due to the COVID-19 pandemic. Since then, Billhardt says “it has been a great experience,” including weekly regional ranking calls and deliberations over the final team and individual selections for the national championships.
“The selection process for the at-large teams is really a fascinating exercise to go through and one I wish more coaches could get a first-hand look into,” he said. “It is one of the most difficult decisions you have to make when you get down to the final spot in the field, but with proper preparation and commitment to sticking by the Primary Selection Criteria for any given sport, I am confident in saying that more often than not the correct teams get selected for the national tournament fields.”
Billhardt was well prepared for his leadership turn on the NCAA Division III Women’s Golf National Committee. During the 2016-17 and 2017-18 school years, while he was the assistant executive director of the North Coast Athletic Conference (NCAC), Billhardt represented the NCAC on the Great Lakes Regional Advisory Committee for NCAA Division III Men’s Golf.
After accepting the position at Wittenberg in 2018, Billhardt says he got a “nudge” from NCAC Executive Director Keri Luchowski to apply for an opening on the women’s golf committee. He’s glad he did.
“It has been a really enjoyable experience, and it’s awesome to meet and interact with new people from all across the country,” Billhardt said.
