Cleveland Community College (CCC) President Jason Hurst (right) and Athletic Director Chris Nanney (left) recently discussed the college's new athletics program and mascot.

Recently April Hoyle Shauf sat down with Cleveland Community College (CCC) President Jason Hurst and Athletic Director Chris Nanney to discuss the college's new athletics program and mascot.

AHS: Why did you decide to launch an athletics program at CCC?
JH: The reality is when you are a part-time student the likelihood of you finishing is much less than if you are a full-time student. It's also statistically proven that if we can find ways to get students engaged and feel a part of the campus and feel a part of the college community, we are more likely to retain those students and it is more likely that they will graduate.
So we are always looking for ways to better engage our students and to get them involved in things on campus and to try to develop that sense of belonging. We know that athletics is a piece of that. Student athletes are required to be full-time students, so as we start these new programs we will automatically have an influx of full-time students that we wouldn't have otherwise had.
The other piece of this is that we very much want the community to get involved with the college. We are looking for ways and opportunities to get community members to come onto our campus. We know that starting athletics is a way to do that.

AHS: What are the different sports that you are going to offer and the timetable for them?
CN: We'll start with men's and women's cross-country this fall. Women's fast-pitch softball will start practice as a team this fall and begin play in spring of 2020. And in the 2021 season, we will add men's baseball. They will begin practice in the fall of 2020 and begin play in the spring of 2021. Beyond that we are looking at potentially volleyball and basketball, but that would require some renovations to our gymnasium.

AHS: What are the main costs involved in starting an athletics program?
CN: We have to buy balls and uniforms. A lot of schools already have these things in place, but we're starting from scratch.... We will need to purchase this type of equipment just to get going.

AHS: Tell me about your mascot, the Yeti.
JH: Dr. Nanney went through an exhaustive list of what other schools were using as a mascot in the area. We didn't want to be anything that was too close to anything else in our region and we wanted to be something that was a little different from the others. We had a committee that identified 10 potential mascot names, and we went through two votes to narrow it down to three. Those three we put on Facebook to allow the community to choose between "Yetis," "Cardinals" or "Cougars." Those were narrowed down to the top two: "Yetis" or "Cougars." And that vote wasn't even close - "Yeti" was pretty much unanimously selected.
Since then, we have been working to determine what this mystical creature is going to look like. So thinking about our brand, and thinking about our logo, we engaged an online firm to come up with our final logo. We actually had 22 designers to submit ideas for the logo, and they came up with a wide variety of design ideas. The committee narrowed down those ideas to pick one design and then to hone that design into our final mascot. This mascot will be integrated onto the uniforms, of course, but will also be used on hats and shirts for the public to purchase.
Yeti or not here we come!

For more information about Cleveland Community College, visit the school's website at ClevelandCC.edu or search for "Cleveland Community College" on Facebook.

By April Hoyle-Shauf, Special to Community First Media