BEAVER TOWNSHIP — You will forgive Dr. Helen Lafferty, interim president of Youngstown State University, if she is a little conflicted this Saturday when YSU takes on Villanova in the second-round of the FCS playoffs.
Lafferty, a Youngstown native and YSU alum who has spent four decades as an administrator and faculty member at Villanova, and who most recently served as a global-national member of the YSU Board of Trustees until her appointment to YSU’s top position, says she is in a no-lose situation.
“It’s definitely the definition of conundrum,” she told the Curbstone Coaches during Monday’s weekly meeting at Avion Banquet Center. “The important thing someone told me is that I really cannot lose. You are not putting me on the spot by asking for my prediction because mine is that the best team will win.”
Lafferty believes academics and athletics complement one another.
“I believe that the most important part of any university is the academic side and you would not think that was any different because I am an academic, head to toe,” she added. “I am a professor, so academics are very important for me. However, there are things that you learn from being a member of a sports team that you will never learn in a classroom.
“I have had the privilege of teaching many of our athletes and I absolutely love them. Every so often, I can make sports analogies with them and they get it. So I think there are, again, a lot of things that you learn being a member of a team that you don’t learn in a classroom setting. I really see it as a combination of taking academics, joining it, marrying it to athletics and you really have one solid person.”
When asked to take part in a promotion at a YSU basketball game with free tuition on the line for a lucky student, Lafferty jumped at the opportunity to lend an assist for one of her students.
“I was just so unnerved because they wanted me to shoot a basket and I’m thinking, oh, my goodness,” she said. “Servpro was kind enough to award a tuition scholarship for the spring semester and there was a wonderful young woman, her name was Monica and she was from Nepal. If I made the shots and I had three attempts, she would get the scholarship. Unfortunately, my bad because I didn’t make the shots but I thought you know what, this child is going to get that scholarship.
“So, I took the microphone from the gentleman’s hand and said, you all know I didn’t make that shot. But I think, and I’ve heard from Servpro, that if you really cheer and clap very loudly then she will get the scholarship. Can you do that, I asked? They almost brought the rafters down. Monica got her scholarship but there’s another part to the story. Being from Nepal, that Monday they had a feast called the ‘Feast of the Blessings.’ She and her sister were not there because they were here at YSU and they were feeling very badly about the fact that they didn’t receive any blessings.
“Then, Tuesday happened and she got her blessing so both Monica and her sister were in my office the next day, crying their eyes out saying we have been blessed, Dr. Lafferty, we have been blessed.”
Connecting and building relationships during Lafferty’s time on campus was a top priority.
“I think one of my significant accomplishments was that I really tried to keep the faculty, staff and students as my focus, and I tried to build relationships with each group that I felt were important, lasting and meaningful for them as well as for me,” Lafferty said. “I think I accomplished that fairly well and certainly if I were staying, that would continue to be my focus.”
While COVID has changed the way things are done personally and professionally, Lafferty said education and athletics continue to move forward.
“I see higher education going forward and I see athletics going forward, although COVID was a very, very dark part of our history,” she said. “There were some silver linings, however, as we began to define the word essential much differently. So, who are the essentials? They were the nurses, the doctors, the people who put food on the shelves at our food markets so that was a good thing.
“The other good thing is we had to learn to pivot educationally. We did things online that we used to do face-to-face and for a lot of people, they were really very good at it. So I do think that it gave us a chance to perhaps explore some other avenues of our own expertise that we never really knew we had.”
Next Monday, Struthers native Tom Bochenek, professional and college sports correspondent and statistician, will serve as guest speaker.
