After three years promoting “passion, alignment, and competitive excellence” as the William V. Campbell Director of Athletics at Boston College, Martin Jarmond has been hired away to UCLA to serve the same position.
The Los Angeles Times reported on Wednesday that Jarmond was one of two finalists for the position with the Bruins before finalizing the deal on Saturday, according to Pete Thamel of Yahoo! Sports. Nevada-Las Vegas’ Desiree Reed-Francois was the other final contender, according to the LA Times. Reed-Francois has ties to the Bruins, as she was on the crew team at UCLA during her undergraduate years.
Other strongly considered candidates included Virginia’s Carla Williams and the University of Pennsylvania’s M. Grace Calhoun, according to the LA Times.
When he was hired in 2017, the 37-year-old Jarmond was the youngest athletic director at any Power Five institution.
“In my professional career, I’ve always been young,” Jarmond said in his introductory press conference three years ago. “To me that doesn’t matter. It’s about people. It’s about respect. It’s about trust.”
Jarmond arrived on the Heights after serving as the deputy athletics director and an associate athletics director for development for Ohio State since 2009.
Many of BC’s athletics flourished under Jarmond’s leadership. In his first year, both men’s and women’s hockey earned Hockey East regular-season championships, and men’s basketball had its first shot in the postseason since 2011 with a trip to the National Invitational Tournament.
Since then, men’s and women’s soccer, women’s hockey, women’s tennis, lacrosse, and field hockey all found their way to the NCAA Tournament at least once, and women’s basketball was a favorite to make the tournament this year after a record-breaking season.
In his three-year stint with the Eagles, Jarmond orchestrated the hiring of six different head coaches, including football’s Jeff Hafley, women’s soccer’s Jason Lowe, volleyball’s Jason Kennedy, women’s basketball’s Joanna Bernabei-McNamee, men’s soccer’s Bob Thompson, and softball’s Amy Kvilhaug. Volleyball and women’s basketball each doubled their win totals from the previous years after the head coaching changes.
Jarmond was also the catalyst in BC Athletics’ first-ever strategic plan, which laid out a five-year program to improve BC Athletics as a whole through “fostering student-athlete formation, strengthening competitive excellence, increasing external engagement, and enhancing facilities,” according to BCEagles.com. In order to make the strategic plan possible, Jarmond also orchestrated BC Athletics’ first-ever capital campaign for $150 million—the largest total of any ACC competitor.
Jarmond heads to UCLA after former Athletic Director Dan Guerrero announced he would retire at the end of June.
Featured Image by Julia Hopkins / Heights Senior Staff
