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Walking into the Ball State University athletics department, it's difficult to witness the smiles and laughter of administrators happily at work and think the environment was ever viewed negatively in the national scope.
That's precisely the perception Ball State's athletics department held one year ago.
On Sunday, June 24, 2007, men's basketball coach Ronny Thompson was greeted at his office with seven note cards that simply read "liars, cheaters, niggers." On the walls, the perpetrator who broke into the office posted copies of a June 14 article in The Ball State Daily News outlining NCAA violations Thompson's staff had recently been accused of committing during his year-long tenure with the Cardinals.
The incident led to Thompson's abrupt resignation, a $200,000 buyout after the athletics department was classified as a racially hostile working environment and the eventual realignment of how the athletics department conducted its business. In layman's terms, the snowball effect initiated one year ago led to the complete overhaul of the athletics department.
For the past 12 months, the Cardinals' athletics administration has striven to move past the pain generated last summer. Associate athletics director Karin Lee said the administration is using this summer as a springboard for the future of Ball State athletics.
"When we talked about everything that was going on and the transition of the athletics department, we've always said, 'We're starting a new year,'" Lee said. "In any situation with any department that goes through the dark period we went through, it wasn't as easy as snapping your fingers. If you harp on your past, you're going to bring a negative atmosphere to work. Tom put in a plan, and we couldn't get it done in a day. We knew it would probably take a year, and it has."
THE TURMOIL
As hard as he's tried to forget, Peyton Stovall said he remembers the details of that summer day in 2007 well. Like most of his teammates, Stovall, a fifth-year senior captain on last year's squad, was off campus trying to get some rest in the offseason.
"I remember it, but it's hard to keep those memories in my head," Stovall said. "Those weren't the best memories I had at Ball State. I did my best to kind of try to erase those times because it was a tough period. I was just astonished that that may have happened."
Stovall, who became the 24th men's basketball player to score more than 1,000 points during his career at Ball State, was recovering from his second knee injury - a torn ACL - that forced him to miss the entire 2005-06 season. After former coach Tim Buckley was forced from the program, Thompson became Stovall's second coach in as many years.
After going through multiple struggles already, Stovall said he half-expected to see a yellow flag for a late hit out of bounds when he heard the news of the racial notes.
"Here I am," Stovall said, "I'm stressing, I'm getting ready to graduate, my knee's finally starting to feel good, and then I'm hit with more adversity."
Athletics director Tom Collins declared he was committed 100 percent to the men's basketball staff for the weeks to follow. Regardless, Thompson resigned July 12, almost three weeks after the racial notes were found in his office.
For the first time in his collegiate career, Stovall was pushed into a situation where he was the individual teammates looked to for guidance. Until that point, the leader of the pack had been Skip Mills, another 1,000-point scorer at Ball State, who was a year of eligibility ahead of Stovall because of the knee injury.
Despite his own frustrations, Stovall said, he didn't have the luxury of being selfish.
"Dealing with the incoming freshmen, they're not used to that stuff," Stovall said. "It was definitely a good two months that we didn't have a coach, for the second year in a row. When we didn't have a coach again, the structure was just falling apart for us. I knew it was best for us to keep guys together, along with [fellow captain] Anthony Newell. We needed to keep guys together and keep their minds on track."
While Stovall gathered his teammates, Collins tried to fit the pieces back into a broken puzzle. When Collins had announced Thompson as the head coach in early April 2006, the decision was met with much praise from Ball State fans, according to articles in The Ball State Daily News. Collins said the attack Thompson's office and the traces of racism left behind left him deeply offended
"I've had somebody break into my house, and I know how you feel like you're violated," Collins said. "It kind of felt that way, 'How could this happen?' What we want is a safe environment for our coaches and our student athletes where everybody can flourish and be successful."
THE AFTERMATH
Getting Collins to place his focus in the past can often be like pulling teeth. A natural optimist away from his office, Collins, who Stovall described as "a driven guy," is known by his staff for never being satisfied with results if there's something more to be done.
Last summer, there was a lot to be done.
Collins receive plenty of blame and scrutiny in the Muncie community from local fans and media after Thompson bolted Ball State. Numerous editorials were written in The Ball State Daily News criticizing Collins' direction and questioning whether his leadership had generated the hostile racial environment.
Regardless, Collins said he refused to give credence to external pressures, instead remaining committed to moving past the dark cloud generated by the Thompson era.
"I try not to look back too much on that stuff," Collins said. "Really, we were trying to look forward and take care of people. We just wanted to move the thing forward, but it was a difficult time for everybody, not only [in the athletics department] but people on campus, too."
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