Featured Alumni

The latest edition of the USSA Alumni Newsletter is out now! Alumni Spotlight: Scott Schumacher Scott Schumacher is a 1989 graduate of the United States Sports Academy with a master's degree in Sports Management. For more than 30 years, Scott Schumacher has been a staple in the NJCAA basketball community.  He is serving his 12th year as the Director of Athletics and Head Men’s Basketball Coach at Blinn College in Brenham, Texas. Schumacher decided to pursue a master's degree in sports management in the United States Sports Academy after seeing an ad in the YMCA paper during his first year of college. READ MORE New Sports Teams Part of Exciting Resurgence at USSA The United States Sports Academy launched their first ever intercollegiate athletic team in the fall of 2023 [...]

Noemi Zaharia is an Olympic medalist, world Universiade champion, successful former collegiate swimming coach and a professor at the University of Alabama-Huntsville. She now has another title: Doctor. Zaharia’s impressive swimming record includes two medals in swimming at the 1988 Summer Olympics in Seoul, South Korea, winning silver in the 400 meter mixed and bronze in the 200 meter mixed for Romania. She also won five gold medals, two bronze medals and MVP honors in swimming at the 1987 Summer Universiade in Yugoslavia. She also competed in the 1992 Summer Olympics in Barcelona. In May, she walked across the stage and collected her Doctor of Education degree in sports management at USSA's commencement program. She earned her degree in 2020, but could not travel to the USSA campus because that year's [...]

Occupation: Director of Intercollegiate Athletics at Chicago State University USSA Degree: M.S.S. Sports Management Hometown: New Boston, Texas As Director of Intercollegiate Athletics at Chicago State University, Dr. Monique Carroll oversees 15 NCAA Division 1 sports programs and serves as a member of the President's Cabinet. She joined CSU in September 2022 after working two years as athletic director at Huston-Tillotson University. Carroll earned her Master of Sports Science degree from the Academy while she worked in the Southwestern Athletic Conference (SWAC) office in Birmingham, Ala. "I was in Birmingham at the time and I knew I needed a master's degree to move up in my career," Carroll said. "I started doing research into master's degrees and ultimately, it came down to a decision between the Academy and business school [...]

Throughout his nearly five decade career in athletic leadership, Dr. Marty Durden has written extensively about the “servant-leader” model of sports coaching. Recently, Durden released his new book, “More than Winning: The Servant-Leader Coach in Contemporary Society” that is available for purchase on Amazon. In the book Durden, a 2016 doctoral graduate from the Academy, shares his insight and research about the transformational influence of servant-leadership coaching. “My research has shown that servant-leadership coaching elicits a higher level of sustained effort,” Durden said. “Young people who view their coach through the lens of trust tend to face the crucible of athletics with a higher degree of determination…The Higher Standard is the antidote to the insipient uptick of unethical incidents in our beloved (coaching) profession.” Durden is a veteran coach whose [...]

Longtime faculty member and alumnus Dr. Fred Cromartie has been named interim Vice President of Academic Affairs at the United States Sports Academy. Cromartie is also an Academy alumnus, having earned his Doctor of Education and Master of Sports Science degrees here. Cromartie also holds a master’s degree in Human Resource Development from Webster University and a bachelor’s degree from Ripon College. “I’ve been around here for a long time and I really love the Academy, its students, and its graduates,” Cromartie said. “I am very excited for a new challenge serving as Vice President for Academic Affairs.” In his 26 years of work at the Academy, Cromartie has held various leadership positions including: Assistant Dean for Undergraduate Studies, Chair of Sports Management, Chair of Sports Studies, Chair of Sports [...]

When the U.S. Men’s Sitting Volleyball Team completed its best-ever finish at the World ParaVolley Championships in Sarajevo in November, the team did so under the leadership of United States Sports Academy alumnus Greg Walker. Walker was the Academy’s 2021 Alumnus of the Year because of his decade of experience coaching volleyball at the Paralympic and collegiate levels. In addition to his coaching duties with Team USA, Walker is also the head coach of the Smith College women’s volleyball team in Northampton, Mass. A native of Huntingdon, Pa., Walker has been active with the U.S. Men’s Sitting Volleyball Team since 2013 and has served as head coach since 2016. Sitting volleyball is a variation of the original game but designed for athletes with adaptive needs. The sport is governed by [...]

Former United States Sports Academy teaching assistant and alumnus Dr. Jimmy Mattern was recently named the faculty athletic representative at Wilmington College in Ohio. Mattern is an assistant professor of sport management and the area coordinator for sport sciences at Wilmington. He completed his Doctor of Education degree while working on campus at the Academy in Daphne, Ala., in 2014. Mattern completed his Academy doctoral degree in 2018 at age 27, making him one of the youngest people ever to complete the institution’s doctoral program. At Wilmington, Mattern works with another Academy graduate, Dr. Alan Ledford, who is the program director and associate professor of sport management. “It is nice to have that Academy connection here with Dr. Ledford,” Mattern said. “It says something good about the Academy that it [...]