Longwood University Athletics

Michelle Meadows has long served a crucial role in the Longwood athletics department, overseeing various aspects of the university's internal athletics operations for more than a decade. She now sits in the highest position in the department, being appointed athletics director by Longwood University President W. Taylor Reveley on May 13, 2019. Meadows' elevation to athletics director followed an impactful 13-year career behind the scenes and an eight-month stint at interim athletics director.

Meadows has been a driving force not just within Longwood athletics, but among the entire campus community since she first came to Longwood in 2005. She has been an instrumental piece of the department's behind-the-scenes operations, with various stints supervising athletics offices responsible for academic services, NCAA compliance, scholarships, and facility operations. Most recently before her appointment to interim athletics director, she served as the chief financial officer and oversaw the athletics department's business operations and human resources, including budgeting, financial reporting, policies & procedures, and administrative development. 

Meadows has risen from assistant athletics director to her current post during a Longwood tenure that began in 2005. She is currently the longest-tenured athletics administrator on campus and has played an integral role in several influential periods in the department's history, including the Division I transition and Longwood's move into the Big South Conference. 

Meadows' fingerprints are on nearly every aspect of the student-athlete experience at Longwood, having served as the catalyst to numerous initiatives that have shaped the department into one whose focus is on providing a quality, influential experience for the university’s more than 200 student-athletes.
 
Beginning with her arrival in 2005, she has enhanced the department’s NCAA compliance program with a focus on education and monitoring, she has led the creation and development of the academic services department to provide resources to student-athletes for athletic, academic, career and personal pursuits, and she engineered the collaboration of Longwood’s academic services, athletic training and sports performance departments into the student-athlete enhancement unit, which aims to provide a holistically viable approach to student-athlete success.
 
Her influence has produced a run of consistently strong department-wide academic performances from Longwood’s student-athletes, including the 2017-18 academic year when Longwood’s student-athletes compiled a cumulative grade point average of 3.08.
 
During her lengthy tenure, Meadows has held titles of assistant athletics director (2005-09), associate athletics director (2009-14), senior associate athletic director (2014-2018) and deputy athletics director (2018), as well as the senior woman administrator role she was appointed to in 2007 and still holds today. Her leadership roles extend well beyond Longwood's athletics department, with posts on numerous influential boards and committees at the university, conference and even national level.
 
In 2018, she earned appointment to the NCAA Softball Selection Committee where she is one of 10 college administrators and coaches charged with selecting the 64 teams that make up the NCAA softball postseason tournament, executing the Women's College World Series, and other initiatives to advance the sport. 

She also holds numerous other leadership positions on campus, from her post on the Presidential Advisory Board to her position as a liaison to various campus departments, including Residential & Commuter Life, Admissions, Financial Aid and Student Success & Enrollment Management. 
 
In her role as senior woman administrator, she currently serves on the Big South Board of Administrators, Strategic Planning Committee, Hall of Fame Committee, the Men’s and Women’s Basketball Committees and Softball Committee. Meadows was also appointed by the Board of Visitors to serve on the Compensation Task Force in 2012 and appointed Co-Chair, as well as the Presidential Selection Committee for Longwood’s 26th President, W. Taylor Reveley IV.

Prior to Longwood, she was the Assistant Compliance Director (2003-05) at Virginia Commonwealth University where she earned her master of science degree from the Center for Sports Leadership in 2003.
 
A Richmond native, she graduated summa cum laude from Virginia Tech in 2001 with a bachelor of science degree in human nutrition, foods, and exercise. She was a four-year starter in softball for the Hokies and a three-time Academic All-American, the first student-athlete to do so at Virginia Tech at that time. She was named the Atlantic 10 Player of the Year and Atlantic 10 Softball Student-Athlete of the Year in her senior season.
 
Following the conclusion of her playing career, Meadows received the NCAA Postgraduate Scholarship Award and was honored by Virginia Tech with the Skelton Award for Academic Excellence in Athletics at the conclusion of her career. On October 22, 2010, Meadows was inducted into the Virginia Tech Sports Hall of Fame for her contributions as a Virginia Tech student-athlete.