Guest Speaker: Bill Popp

Bill Popp is the Athletic Director and head baseball coach at Reinhardt University. He first went to West Georgia but finished up his Bachelor of Science degree at Kennesaw State University. After college, Popp was a volunteer assistant at Oglethorpe University and got lucky enough to become head coach there after the first year. Bill Popp was the first and only head baseball coach at Reinhardt. As a head coach, he informed us about Reinhardt's sport history and all the conferences it has been in. Reinhardt is part of the NAIA, which has 60,000 student athletes and 290 schools involved. Reinhardt was originally affiliated with a junior college and began in the GCAC conference. They then moved to the SSAC conference for seven years until they moved to the AAC conference this past year. Reinhardt has 15 total sports, 8 for women and 7 for men. As an athletic director, Bill Popp does a variety of activities. He develops a mission statement and sets goals with a goal report every year. He checks eligibility of all athletes of the school and developed a booster club. Popp helped get both the baseball and softball fields built, a new fitness center, and lights for baseball and softball. As far as his hours go, Popp says it depends on what time of year it is. We also discussed adding a football program at Reinhardt and how it would basically end up paying for itself. I really enjoyed having Bill Popp as a guest speaker and learned a lot from his presentation.