OwlScoop.com recently sat down for a lengthy interview with Temple Athletic Director Pat Kraft that we’re breaking into a three-part series for our readers and subscribers.
You can listen to the first segment here: A conversation with Pat Kraft, Part I
Kraft, who initially came to North Broad Street as Temple’s deputy athletic director, has served in his current role since 2015.
And in the span of four-and-a-half years, a lot has happened.
Kraft has been part of three football head coaching searches, hired Aaron McKie to replace Fran Dunphy as the head of the Owls’ basketball program, and overseen the development of several new facilities and academic upgrades.
In Part I of his conversation with OwlScoop.com, Kraft covered several topics, including his time as an Indiana football player, his early days in the sports industry (including a stint as the business development director for the national governing body of synchronized swimming), what led him to Temple, and how the university’s student athletes have reached record grade point averages in the classroom and succeeded on a national level with the program’s Academic Progress Rate numbers.
We kicked off the conversation by asking Kraft about what advice he would give himself if he could go back in time to when he first got the job back in 2015.
“I would say enjoy the moments more,” Kraft, who resides in Haddonfield, New Jersey with his wife, Betsy, and their two children, Annie and Joseph. “Enjoy the highs and relish in them.”
Kraft pointed first to the 2015 football season, when Temple’s football team got to a 7-0 start and a top-25 ranking and nearly beat Notre Dame at a sold-out Lincoln Financial Field on ABC’s national game of the week, and to the 2016 season as well.
“I was so consumed with the next game,” Kraft recalled. “Can we maintain this? And even the (American Athletic Conference) championship the following year. And I sit back and I think about it. You just mature, right? We just get older and wiser, and I think my kids have helped exponentially for me in that.”
“It’s so hard to have success - and to experience success – to really, really enjoy it,” Kraft added. “Because there’s lows, right? And so I know that would be one of the things: take time to enjoy it.
Front page photo courtesy of Temple Athletics.
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