The University of Illinois Springfield announced on Monday it had selected Peyton Deterding as its new director of athletics.
Deterding, who will begin the job on Dec. 9, replaces Jim Sarra, who resigned in July.
He comes to Springfield after spending 12 years at Illinois State University in Normal; he’s presently the school’s senior associated athletic director.
Deterding, 44, was chosen out of more than 50 candidates, UIS said in a press release on Monday.
On Monday evening, Deterding said he had two big factors that drew him to this job.
“I think the first one is the support from chancellor (Susan) Koch,” Deterding said. “She’s a big a supporter of athletics — that makes the director of athletics job a little bit easier.
“And then the opportunity for growth at UIS in terms of a campus perspective and also an athletics’ perspective. There’s a great foundation in place; you’re seeing with some of the early results in terms of the basketball seasons. We just had two compete in the D-II cross country national championships out in California (UIS’ first cross country All-American, Taryn Christy as well as Blake Jones). There’s some exciting things happening at UIS and we hope to continue to build and gain some positive momentum.”
UIS is an NCAA Division II school in the Great Lakes Valley Conference with 17 sports and Deterding said more may be added in the future.
“I think at all levels of athletics, you’re really looking at opportunities to bring students to campus and one of the avenues that colleges and universities are looking at is athletic departments and how they can play a role to add into the enrollment,”
This article appeared in The State Journal-Register on November 25, 2019.
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