Mike Yeager has been among the most generous Naval Academy graduates in terms of giving back to his alma mater.
Yeager, a 1976 graduate and former Navy varsity football player, has donated millions to the Naval Academy Athletic Association for various projects. The Yeager Pavilion at Navy-Marine Corps Memorial Stadium, which is where postgame press conferences are held, is named in his honor.
Yeager has also been a very active volunteer, serving on the Board of Directors for the Naval Academy Foundation. He is also a trustee with the Naval Academy Athletic and Scholarship Program, serving as chairman of fundraising.
In an effort to become more effective at athletic fundraising, Yeager has engaged with numerous other institutions to solicit information and ideas. The Houston resident discovered that most major universities have a “very robust” organization dedicated to varsity sports letterwinners.
Yeager knew the Naval Academy did not — an oversight that has since been corrected.
In mid-January, the Navy Letterwinners Association was launched with Rob Friedrich serving as executive director. Athletic director Chet Gladchuk said the mission of the new organization is to reconnect former varsity and club athletes to the Naval Academy and to each other.
“Under Rob Friedrich's leadership, we have established a full-speed-ahead approach to engaging thousands of alumni who have represented the blue and gold on the fields of competition over decades,” Gladchuk said. “Bringing our letterwinners home through enhanced regular communication and programming will effectively bridge our stories past with today's midshipmen.”
Friedrich transitioned to his new role shortly after retiring as Navy's director of rowing and heavyweight coach after spending 23 years with the program. He spent six months strategizing various outreach methods before the Navy Letterwinners Association was officially announced last month.
Much meticulous research led Friedrich to discover the Naval Academy has more than 23,000 living letterwinners. Only 25% of those people that are products of Navy's 36 varsity or 15 club sports have stayed engaged with the academy.
“That's because we've never made a conscious effort to focus on our former athletes,” Yeager said. “We are now targeting the 75% we never hear from with the goal of reconnecting them with the Naval Academy. With Rob Friedrich leading the charge, we've put on a full-court press to get everyone involved.”
Friedrich has established a monthly newsletter that updates alums on the Navy Letterwinners Association initiatives, spotlights current varsity or club athletes and provides interviews with varsity coaches among other things. The Letterwinners Association now has a tab on
navysports.com featuring regular content.
For Friedrich, the first order of business was finding all the missing letterwinners. He has worked closely with the Naval Academy Alumni Association to build a database. He has utilized letterwinners lists and sports rosters dating back 50-plus years. He has worked to establish contacts for each sport and worked with former team captains to reach out to teammates.
Those efforts have paid dividends as the February newsletter from the Navy Letterwinners Association was emailed to nearly 20,000 graduates.
“We're off to a good start and working to close the gap every month,” Friedrich said. “Our records for varsity letterwinners are pretty good. For club letterwinners, not so much.”
The Navy Letterwinners Association has organized a tailgate party to be held in conjunction with the Army-Navy men's lacrosse game on April 12. There will be another tailgate specifically for past letterwinners held during a Navy home football game in the fall.
Friedrich is working with varsity coaches to set up sports-specific events such as alumni dinners, alumni games or alumni mentorship. An important element of the outreach is to honor former varsity or club letterwinners that are deserving.
“Our hope is to implement various alumni events for all the sports that haven't done so in the past,” Friedrich said. “We're here to support the varsity coaches in terms of alumni engagement and figuring out ways to recognize and honor their former athletes.”
An ambitious goal would be to create an alumni support organization similar to the Navy Football Brotherhood for all varsity and club sports.
The Navy Football Brotherhood, officially founded in 2011, is a nonprofit organization dedicated to supporting the varsity football program along with past, present and future players. It has a mentorship program that helps current Navy football players with service selection or former players with transitioning to civilian life.
The Navy Football Brotherhood has its own website, holds an annual golf tournament fundraiser and supports the families of fallen members.
Football and men's lacrosse are two varsity sports that conduct service selection roundtables between former and current players. Friedrich would like to grow that idea to include the entire athletic department and hold events during the fall, winter and spring seasons.
As director of rowing, Friedrich was very creative in connecting with alumni of the varsity heavyweight and lightweight teams. Rowing is one sport that has needs that often surpass the funding provided by the Naval Academy Athletic Association.
Rowing shells cost $60,000 apiece and the Navy varsity teams were able to buy two or three per year thanks to the generous support of former letterwinners. Friedrich pitched the idea of buying boats in memory of former coaches, teammates or entire classes.
Initially, the mission of the Navy Letterwinners Association is to reengage academy alums that played varsity or club sports through increased communication, including regular emails and social media postings. Naturally, the ultimate goal would be to get past letterwinners to donate to the Naval Academy Athletic Association as a whole or the specific sport.
“I had experience in this realm because of my alumni engagement with the rowing team for 23 years, so this was kind of a natural transition for me,” Friedrich said. “I'm trying to bring that type of engagement to all club and varsity sports. We want to get folks back to campus and make sure they are aware of what we're doing. We want them to be connected with Navy athletics.”
