Justin Newell began his role as vice president and director of athletics at the beginning of February after more than a decade on the athletics staff at Kenyon College, including the last four as associate director of athletics. He also has served in various capacities at the Division I level at Tulane, Jacksonville, and Michigan, but Division III is where his passion lies. Now that he has his feet under him at Knox, we decided to sit down with him and get some insight into his assessment of the athletics department and his vision for where the Prairie Fire are headed.

What have been your first impressions of Knox College athletics and the college itself?
Everyone always talks about their people being special, but this has truly been a unique experience. I’ve never felt a more welcoming environment at any institution I’ve ever been at. There’s an energy about it. There’s this passion and desire to grow and be better at things, just across the board.

You have talked about making Knox Athletics better. What is your vision for doing just that?
For me, it’s patience and, also, persistence. It’s about building a foundation and being patient and growing it over time. It’s going to be a process of educating ourselves on what really works here, how we build that and, then, as we build that excellence, I think more people will want to come and be a part of it. It’s going to be this kind of slow trickle that in 10 years, I think we’ll look back and think how did we even get here?

Knox Athletics has good facilities—the football stadium, the soccer stadium, Memorial Gym. What does it take to make them great?
President McGadney would say investment, absolutely investment. It’s where we go in the future. And I think there needs to be an investment in our facilities—they’re good, but they can be great. They haven’t been updated in a little while, particularly, the T. Fleming Fieldhouse, Memorial Gym, locker rooms, things that students really care about. An investment in the student-athlete experience is a big step toward making us great. It’s those improvements that we can make that wow recruits and also make people proud to walk into the space.

What is something that you see as something that could be a game changer for Knox Athletics?
In the world of Division I athletics, as we talk about transfer portals and NIL and everything else, there is the youth sport culture of driving for results. I think we’re looking at the wrong results. It's not about a scholarship. It’s about the process of getting there, and what we are really in tune with doing is using athletics as a part of the educational tool. What Division III does really well and what a place like Knox does even better is leverage athletics to better you as a human being to enter the world. I think athletics provides so many values—resiliency, competitiveness, teamwork—these things that drive us in the business world, the ability to communicate all the things that surround liberal arts. And that’s why I think Knox and athletics go hand in hand, and I think we’re losing focus on that. Yes, we want to win. I want to win. I want to get results, but it's the pursuit of winning that I really want to focus on.