Sherryta Freeman is in her eighth year as the director of athletics in charge of the College’s 23 varsity sports programs, taking over the leadership reins on Feb. 19, 2018.
Freeman is passionate about the experience of student-athletes and believes in promoting a program that supports their holistic development.
When she was hired, Freeman was one of 18 women out of 124 directors of athletics at FCS institutions and one of 54 out of the 380 across Division I conferences. Fourteen of those were women of color, including eight at football-playing institutions.
Currently, she serves as a vice president of the Football Championship Subdivision Athletics Directors Association (FCS ADA), her third year in a vice presidential role. She also serves as the Patriot League representative to the NCAA’s Football Championship Subdivision Oversight committee and is a member of the NACDA Executive Committee.
During her tenure at Lafayette, Freeman has overseen significant facility additions and upgrades, including the construction of the Wallach Sports Performance and Lacrosse Center opened in 2025 and the dedication of Gummeson Grounds soccer facility in 2023 along with arena and facade upgrades to Kirby Sports Center.
Upon her arrival on College Hill in 2018, Freeman launched and garnered campus-wide support for a strategic plan for Lafayette Athletics. The plan, Creating a Championship Culture, features six pillars: achieving competitive excellence, strengthening academic excellence, providing the most positive student-athlete experience possible, building more community and spirit for Lafayette Athletics, ensuring integrity in everything associated with Lafayette athletics and securing the funding necessary for success.
In 2020, Freeman helped develop a new mission, vision and core values for Lafayette athletics. “P.A.R.D.S.” emerged from that undertaking, an acronym that enumerates the defining qualities of Lafayette student-athletes and staff: Passionate, Accountable, Resilient, Driven and Selfless.
In 2020-21, Freeman followed with a diversity, equity and inclusion initiative that continues to shape the department. In that school year, she was named a Nike Administrator of the Year by Women Leaders in College Sports. A year later, Sports Illustrated and Empower Onyx tabbed her one of the “100 influential Black women in sports.
At the beginning of the 2021-22 school year, Freeman was added to the senior leadership team of president Nicole Hurd, strengthening her role as a campus leader. In 2023-24, Freeman was given oversight of the College’s recreation services department which includes sports clubs, intramurals, aquatics, and fitness efforts under its umbrella.
Freeman graduated from Women Leaders in College Sports' Institute for Administrative Advancement in 2005 and completed the NCAA Pathways Program in 2017-18, an initiative that serves to assist minority and/or women administrators to prepare through education, training and mentorship to be athletic directors. She has also completed the Athlete Development Professional certification program at The Wharton School's Aresty Institute of Executive Education at the University of Pennsylvania and was a participant in the NCAA Division I-A Athletic Directors Institute.
Prior to coming to Lafayette, Freeman served as the Senior Associate Athletic Director and Senior Woman Administrator at Penn, where she was the chief of intercollegiate athletics since 2016. She had been tasked with developing and communicating the strategic direction of the program's 33 varsity sports, including budget oversight and personnel decisions. She also oversaw the staffs responsible for compliance, academic services, student development and sports performance along with supervising the individuals charged with execution of the prospective student-athlete admissions and financial aid process.
Freeman worked in multiple roles at Temple. She was the Senior Associate A.D. from 2011-15, Associate A.D. for Compliance and Student Services from 2007-11 and the Assistant A.D. for Compliance from 2005-07. Freeman was responsible for all matters related to institutional integrity and student-athlete welfare while also supervising select sport programs.
Prior to Temple, Freeman realized her first administrative opportunity at her alma mater, Dartmouth, serving as the Assistant A.D. for Compliance from Jan. 2004 to Aug 2005. Her appointment at Dartmouth came a month before she completed her master's degree in Sport Management from UMass in 2003 and followed a six-month stint at Dartmouth as a compliance and event management assistant. Freeman's first foray into collegiate athletic administration came at the Ivy League office from 2001-02 when she worked as a public information assistant in Princeton, N.J.
The native of Hillside, N.J. earned her bachelor’s degree in environmental studies with a minor in African and African American Studies in 2001 from Dartmouth where she was a two-time Ivy League basketball champion.
Updated (9/25)
