Sherryta Freeman is in her sixth year as the Director of Athletics at Lafayette College, taking over the leadership reins on Feb. 19, 2018. In this role, Freeman leads the College’s 23 varsity sports programs.
Freeman is passionate about the experience of student-athletes and believes in promoting a program that supports their holistic development. Athletics can be a vehicle for bringing together communities and she seeks to provide leadership that fully integrates athletics into the larger campus community.
Freeman’s first two years at Lafayette were highlighted by improved competitiveness and a continuation of strong academic performance. Before the 2019-20 season came to a close, the Leopards experienced a six-place jump in Patriot League Presidents Cup fall standings, after the best fall athletic season in the past 25 years. In addition, three teams finished in second place in the Patriot League. In October, the NCAA placed a spotlight on Lafayette’s academic prowess, ranking its student-athletes seventh in the nation in NCAA Graduation Success Rate. Highlighting the winter season, the women’s basketball program notched its most wins in two decades. The 2018-19 Lafayette athletic season saw many outstanding individual accomplishments - including three Patriot League Rookies of the Year, the Patriot League Scholar-Athlete of the Year, an individual Patriot League title in men’s golf, the Patriot League women’s basketball defensive player of the year, a student-athlete earning the College’s coveted Pepper Prize. In addition, seven teams received APR awards and 334 Leopards were named to the Patriot League Academic Honor Roll.
Freeman launched and garnered campus-wide support for a five-year strategic plan for Lafayette Athletics in the Fall of 2018, seven months into her first year. The plan, titled 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. The work of six implementation committees, featuring broad-based participation from key constituents across campus, began immediately.
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 will continue to shape the department. There are five pillars to the DE&I strategic plan that the Freeman-led task force developed: education, representation, awareness, support & programming, and resources & pledges. 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.
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 and six in the FCS.
Prior to arriving on College Hill, Freeman spent more than 15 years as a senior level administrator at Temple, Penn and Dartmouth.
Currently, she serves as the Third Vice President of the Football Championship Subdivision Athletics Directors Association (FCS ADA).
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 the University of Pennsylvania, 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 University, which competes at the FBS level in football. 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 College, 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 the University of Massachusetts 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 undergraduate degree in Environmental Studies with a minor in African and African American Studies from Dartmouth in 2001. She was a four-year varsity letterwinner in basketball and a member of two Ivy League championship teams which secured NCAA Tournament appearances in 1999 and 2000.
Updated (8/23)
