Andy Hendricks has quietly been doing some extreme multitasking for the past year or so at Franklin College. Finally, some of those tasks are getting delegated elsewhere.
The lone swimming and diving coach in the school’s history and the Grizzlies’ athletic director since May of 2020, Hendricks is giving up both to focus on his new full-time post as the position of vice president for enrollment and marketing — a role he’s filled on an interim basis since last summer.
“I don’t think anybody believed that it was sustainable to do all of it, and that was never the intention,” Hendricks said.
Lance Marshall, Franklin College’s longtime baseball coach and an associate AD for most of that time, now takes over as the head athletic director. He’s been a part of the school’s athletic department since the fall of 1997; now, he’s at the head of it.
“I’m excited for the opportunity, for sure,” Marshall said. “We’ve got a great department with some terrific coaches, and I’m really excited for the opportunity to have an impact on the department as a whole and hopefully individual programs.”
“This is a great thing for Lance, who is just a genuinely down-to-earth, great guy who loves Franklin College,” Hendricks said. “He’s one of the few people who have been there longer than I have.”
Hendricks will still coach the Grizzlies’ swim and dive teams this winter — his daughter Regan is entering her senior year on the women’s squad — before handing the reins to alumnus Zach Rayce, who previously swam for Hendricks and is being promoted from assistant to associate head coach this season.
For his part, Marshall — who surpassed 600 career wins this past spring — plans to remain in the dugout for the foreseeable future.
“I enjoy the heck out of it,” he said. “Sometimes folks get caught up in some of the other stuff; I still enjoy the coaching of the young men and those relationships and the camaraderie and trying to strategize to put together a championship team. I still enjoy the heck out of that, so I think as long as I’m still having fun with it and we’re still competitive — that helps a lot, too, having success.”
In other personnel moves, softball coach Angie Bain is now associate director of athletics and senior woman administrator and women’s volleyball coach Randi Garrett is stepping out of an administrative role to also become the Grizzlies’ coach in men’s volleyball program, which will compete at the club level in 2023-24 with the goal of moving to an NCAA-sponsored sport the following year.
Hendricks notes that the athletic department still falls under his umbrella in his new job. He looks forward to continuing to work with Marshall as they serve as mentors and sounding boards for some of the school’s younger coaches.
“A lot of the big value in this move is that today, colleges and universities rely quite heavily on athletics to drive enrollment, so there’s a real natural connection there,” Hendricks said.
“It’s not like I’m disappearing.”
