Hale takes over as Big Blue director
With his appointment March 23, new Big Blue Club executive director Tom Hale is exactly where he wants to be.
“This is a dream job for me,” Hale said. “To be able to come up here and do this is a dream come true.”
Prior to being named the club’s director, Hale, a Logan native, worked as personal financial representative at Washington Mutual. He also worked at Al’s Sporting Goods for more than 20 years.
“We are pleased that Tom has agreed to join our fund-raising team,” said Kevin Dustin, Utah State associate director of Athletics for External Operations. “He understands the challenges that lie ahead as we continue to grow the program. Tom’s expertise in sales and his connection to the community make him a perfect choice for this position.”
In his new position, Hale is responsible for heading up various fundraising activities for the student-athlete scholarship fund, a challenge he said he is excited for.
“This place has been around for a long time and it does a lot of things right,” Hale said. “I’m going to take the things they’ve been doing right and just try to make them a little bit better.”
Coming off a successful basketball season and looking toward a move to the Western Athletic Conference in 2005, Hale said he’s been put in a good position to reach the club’s donation goals of approximately $700,000.
“It’s a nice time for a guy like myself to jump in and get involved,” Hale said. “We’re on track to reach our goal this year and in the next couple of years I’d really just like to blow our budget level out of the water.”
Hale said the department recently completed its spring auction and is now looking to make improvements on its annual golf tournaments. Hale said turning the department’s St. George tournament into a resort-style getaway might be one such improvement.
“Everybody has golf tournaments,” Hale said. “We want to make them a little more exciting. When we first started golf tournaments, they were few and far between. Now you can play in a golf tournament every weekend if you wanted.”
He also said he would like to make some of the tournaments more affordable, in an effort to involve more members of the community.
“We want to get more people involved, but we want to get a new section of people,” Hale said. “I want to involve all aspects of our community, because every donor is going to help and we are grateful for every donation no matter what the amount.”
The Big Blue Club boasts a membership of around 950, a number Hale said he hopes to improve to around 1,100 over the next year.
“I want to add new members and new money to Big Blue,” Hale said. “We want to reactivate members who haven’t donated because of grudges or politics or whatever. Also, there’s a great resource of 60,000 alumni along the Wasatch Front and we want to tap into that.”
Hale, a Logan High graduate, worked as an intern in the sports information department under director Craig Hislop during the early 1990s.
“I loved doing that. Unfortunately, tuition wavers don’t pay the bills,” Hale said. “Now I’m not going to build a big house on the hill or send my kids to private school. But I’ll be able to pay my bills.”
Longevity and dedication to the university is also a major priority, Hale said.
“Unfortunately, a lot of people use this university as a stepping stone, a resume-filler or whatever,” Hale said. “But I have no intentions of that. I was born and raised in the valley and I’ll probably die here.”
-acf@cc.usu.edu