In sports, much like in the rest of life these days, we’re not exactly into long-term plans – or projects.
Which is why the folks at Thomas More were downright jubilant at the news Thursday that their quest – five years from the day they decided to make a change, four years since they called the NCAA Division II Great Midwest Conference for a little guidance in how to pull this off and three years since they began their provisional NCAA membership – had been successful.
The Saints will be competing as a full-fledged NCAA member for the 2025-2026 school year. As Pres. Joseph Chillo and Vice-President for Athletics Terry Connor set out to do all those years ago.
“Hard to believe,” Chillo said of all the reports, phone calls, surveys, consultations that had to take place to make this happen.
Much less the time and effort and all the hard work in recruiting, practices, games and travel from “every coach, every athlete and every member of the community that cheered them on,” said Connor. “This didn’t happen overnight.”
“This is not just an Athletic Department endeavor, it takes a complete campus buy-in,” said GMAC Commissioner Tom Daeger, who was here with Deputy Commissioner Leslie Schuemann to join in the festivities at the outdoor courtyard in front of TMU’s new academic center. “A tremendous day for Thomas More,” he continued. “This is no easy task.”
But the numbers these last three probationary years say it’s working well for the Saints, Chillo noted. And he wasn’t talking about TMU’s 345 academic all-conference award-winners or the 24 all-conference athletes or the one team championship that bowling accomplished this year.
“Our student-athletes have done a tremendous job,” Chillo said of a retention rate that’s jumped from 68 percent in the pre-NCAA/NAIA days to 77 percent this past year. Or the 2.86 athletic GPA then that’s now 3.12. Then there are the 3,500 hours of community service the TMU athletes piled up.
Which gets us to the stuff that matters. “What’s more important is what you do after your years at Thomas More,” Chillo told the 100 or so athletes here for the news. “That’s what makes you a Saint.”
Literally.
And that’s the key, said Noah Francis, the athlete chosen to speak. The senior cross-country runner from Verona and former Kentucky Class 1A state champ at St. Henry, is a biology major, photography minor pre-med guy hoping for early admission to UK Medical School. That combination, Francis said of the academics and the athletics, “is really hard to find, but TMU is “a place where you can do both.”
Covington Catholic alum Mitchell Rylee, who started his basketball career at Miami of Ohio before transferring home, says “it’s more of a family here, not so impersonal, not so much a business.” And how that has helped the 6-foot-9 center is simple. “Because I have a great relationship with my coach (Justin Ray) off the floor, it helps me on the floor when he coaches me.”
Two basketball players from Cincinnati – junior transfer Colin McHale from Turpin and redshirt freshman Will “Curly” Frey – say that going to school “just 20 minutes from home” gives them a home away from home. Which is part of the rationale for TMU going to NCAA as the lone Division II program in the Greater Cincinnati/Northern Kentucky area.
But McHale, who came from GMAC rival Walsh, in Canton, Ohio, likes it for how lively the TMU campus is as the centerpiece in this Edgewood/Crestview Hills development corridor.
Frey, out of Colerain High School, likes his “No. 1 option” as a “friendly, welcoming campus where everybody here makes you feel like you belong.”
As for Chillo and Connor, the school’s growth in athletics has been reflected in its record-breaking Second Century Campaign where the initial $30 million fundraising goal has now surpassed $45 million.
Athletics has been a big part of that with the incorporation of the Five Seasons Family Sports Club, an upgraded softball complex, new turf and resurfaced track at Republic Bank Field, home of the football, soccer, lacrosse, rugby, track & field and cross-country Saints. Then there’s the way TMU partnered up with the Florence Y’Alls in naming rights for the minor league team’s Florence stadium.
Checked in with TMU football coach Chris Norwell, during this time of pre-August prep work for a football team with 150 players – 63 of them incoming freshmen – on the roster and asked him if he has to resort to that old coach’s trick of writing the players’ names on tape and then taping them to their helmets.
“Nope,” Norwell said, “we know all their names. It’s the Thomas More way.”
Contact Dan Weber at dweber3440@aol.com. Follow him on X (formerly Twitter) @dweber3440.