Conque follows dream to UALR

Chasse Conque grew up the son of a football coach, but he never envisioned following his father, Clint, into the coaching profession.

"Our mother would have killed him," Chasse Conque joked Tuesday.

Instead, Conque said he knew from the time he was 11 that he wanted to be an athletic director, and that dream come to fruition Sunday when UALR Chancellor Joel E. Anderson offered him the job as the Trojans' athletic director during a meeting at Anderson's home.

Conque was introduced Tuesday as UALR's athletic director during a packed news conference at the Jack Stephens Center in Little Rock.

Conque, 30, signed a three-year contract that will pay him $172,000 annually and will begin his duties Jan. 20.

He was chosen from a pool of 46 applicants. Conque was selected over fellow finalists James Sarra, deputy director of athletics at Texas-San Antonio, and Bill Lansden, senior associate athletic director at Alabama-Birmingham, both of whom were brought to campus last month for interviews.

Conque is believed to be the youngest athletic director in NCAA Division I and expressed surprise Tuesday in how swiftly he has advanced to this point.

"It's been a dream of mine," Conque said. "Some kids grow up wanting to be cowboys and Indians. I wanted to be a college athletic director. I mean that."

Conque is the son of Clint Conque, the former University of Central Arkansas coach who just completed his first season as Stephen F. Austin's head coach, and has spent the past 15 years in central Arkansas. He earned an MBA in 2008 from UALR, where he worked as a fundraiser from 2007 to 2011.

He has spent the past three years at the University of Arkansas for Medical Sciences, where he held two different fundraising roles, including senior director of development.

Anderson said he made the selection after telephone interviews with Conque and another finalist last week. He said Conque's fundraising background was important but wasn't the sole reason for his hire. UALR's budget was $8.58 million for 2013-2014, according to U.S. Department of Education figures.

"That is a strength that he brings, and that is critical one for us given the challenges," Anderson said. "He may be primarily a fundraiser, but if you work in an athletics department, in most places that are short-staffed everyone ends up doing a lot of different things."

Anderson described Conque as a leader, ambitious and energetic.

"I have complete confidence that Chasse Conque is the leader that Trojans athletics needs," Anderson said.

Joe Foley, UALR's women's basketball coach who was on the 11-man search committee that chose three finalists, said Conque's background in athletics helped make up for his lack of experience in the day-to-day workings of an athletic department.

"He's been around coaches his whole life," Foley said. "He knows what this profession is about. He knows you have to have money to get it done, so I think he knows how important it is that everything goes together."

Conque said he remembers first thinking about going into athletic administration in October 1995, when his dad was an assistant coach at Louisiana Tech. Chasse Conque traveled with the Bulldogs for a game at Pacific, which was cutting the team after that season, and was introduced to its athletic director and other administrators.

"It was just really a sad moment for the university," Conque said. "That really started painting the picture of this is an interesting business."

Now he'll get to run his own athletic department.

"My management style will develop," he said. "I can tell you I will be a coach's athletic director and I will give them every tool that they need. I will not micro-manage their programs. We will hire and make sure that we keep the coaches that can do the jobs."

Conque, who plans to be in attendance Saturday when UALR hosts Appalachian State in basketball, said he'll first meet with each coach and scholarship athlete. He'll then try to identify where the bar needs to be raised for UALR's athletic budget.

Conque said adding football is something that "has to be looked at," but a school without football can still gain interest from the public. Men's and women's basketball has to be consistent to accomplish that, he said.

"We've got 14 varsity sports here, and we want all of them to be successful," he said. "But all boats rise with a high tide, and we know that our men's and women's basketball programs have that ability to put us on the national stage."

Conque takes over for Chris Peterson, who resigned in September amid a review by Anderson into lewd remarks made by Peterson that were caught on a live webcast during a UALR soccer game. Since April, UALR also has dealt with an independent investigation into accusations of violations within its baseball program, which self-imposed the loss of practice time and the use of an assistant coach for some practices.

"Those are in the past," Anderson said. "I think the people in this room today have not given two thoughts to that. They're enthusiastic about Trojan athletics. They're enthusiastic about Chasse Conque.

"It's all what's in front of us."

Sports on 01/07/2015