With new AD Alex Gary, WMU has 'builder,' 'ambassador' to keep raising profile
Gary enters his role at a time where success has been consistent in Kalamazoo, and now it's his role to increasing the velocity of success.
Kalamazoo — Things have been going pretty damn well for Western Michigan athletics of late.
Now it’s Alex Gary’s job to keep it all going. And make it better.
“Really impressed with Alex and just, you know, not only what he can do as an athletic director and his leadership vision and mission for us to continue to elevate with a great foundation, but also who he is as a person, his character,” WMU football coach Lance Taylor said to Mitten Football.
In Gary, WMU's new athletic director hired away from SMU and introduced Thursday at Heritage Hall in a brief afternoon ceremony, the Broncos are hopeful to have found a natural successor to Dan Bartholomae, and someone who can continue and build on that success.
Gary arrives with the fundraising chops and prior experience leading an athletic department to not just be a caretaker of current success, but take the reins and cajole Bronco athletics to higher heights. It’s something Gary himself is bullish on, aided by the good work of his friend and former Oregon State colleague, Bartholomae, who helped lay what WMU president Russ Kavalhuna referred to repeatedly as the foundation for even greater future success for WMU athletics.
Gary’s not arriving inherently looking to make a splash, but he feels he’s walking into a situation where things are primed to take leaps forward.
“Where we are today is not a destination. It’s a strong foundation. And when you have a strong foundation, you don’t start over,” Gary said at the lectern in his prepared remarks.
Andrew Graham
Andrew Graham
As is the case anywhere in college athletics these days, on-field and programmatic success across an athletic department starts with successful fundraising.
Gary brings the requisite chops in that regard, having raised around $100 million in the last year at SMU, and having cut his teeth early in his career in some fundraising roles. He also takes over a program that has been well-resourced of late.
Both Gary and Kavalhuna spoke to the importance of fundraising, but also that money raised isn’t just blindly spent, but viewed as investments by the community into WMU athletics, and some sort of return is owed on that investment.
Much of that is wins and losses, but Gary also spoke to his belief in teams needing to be part of the campus and broader community. People are inclined to support organizations or businesses they deem as being well run, ultimately.
“I think that's one of the reasons we were able to be so successful in the last few years is because we've been, we've created a lot of belief with people that the business is running well,” Gary said. “When the business is running well, people will support the business. And so we're gonna continue to do that.”
The Broncos, of course, have won myriad conference titles since 2022, including hoisting the MAC football championship trophy in 2025. The men’s ice hockey program won the 2025 national title.
Resources were mustered behind the scenes to help coaches field competitive rosters in the new day and age of college sports. Big facilities projects, namely the Kalamazoo Events Center, highlighted the progress and fundraising efforts buttressing on-field success under the watch of Bartholomae, who took over as the Michigan State athletic director at the end of August.
"Well, as I mentioned, the last four years are an extraordinary foundation," Kavalhuna said. "I mean, our floor is solid, but the ceiling just doesn't exist. There is no ceiling."
And Gary, who helped sell himself to the search committee with his insistence that his “superpower” was his desire to be in Kalamazoo specifically, has a persuasive tact that Kavalhuna complimented.
“The difference is that when he stands up and talks to people about where we're headed and what we're doing, that is a really important thing,” Kavalhuna said. “That is, he is the ambassador of the athletic department. And then you look at what he's done, one year at SMU, $100 million. A Group of 6 athletic department, athletic director, taken programs and gotten them — student athletes do better in the classroom, more active in the community, and then lifted the entire university through improving outcomes on the competition field.
“So — and he did all those things in the last five years. So, this tells me it's a person who is OK with, and actually embraces, the ever changing landscape, but is also a builder.”
And for all the challenges that exist in college athletics, from the business landscape shifting to athletics fitting in with a broader university community to supporting the student athletes on campus, Western Michigan believes it’s found a new leader who isn’t shying from these challenges or looking to quickly buff up a resume.
Instead, the hope around the WMU athletic department is Gary is the right pick to seize upon the recent run of success and spin it forward into the Broncos being a top-tier athletic department. Gary said during a brief press scrum that the goal, as it were, is for Western Michigan to have the best non-power four athletic program.
It’s a lofty ambition, but what were once considered lofty ambitions in Kalamazoo have recently been parlayed into trophies.
It’s a message Gary has already delivered to his head coaches in Kalamazoo, one that’s likely to be well received.
“The resources in here, under my predecessor and the president, have increased significantly,” Gary said. “The resources we have allowed us to compete at a high level in the MAC, obviously. But the resources that we need to be the best non-power five athletic department in the country, we still have a little bit of a ways to go, and that's the next challenge. And so what we talked a little bit about today is, where are we at now? What's our collective ambition mean? And I let them know, without a, you know, 10-point plan, that that’s where I'll be working immediately. This is how I feel about that.”
