As William Harvey guided Hampton University’s rise to Division I during 44 years as president, ‘the team was the dream’

Dr. William R. Harvey enjoyed many moments of athletic celebration in his 44 years as Hampton University’s president.

None surpassed hugging the cheerleaders and players on-court in Boise, Idaho, in the pandemonium following the No. 15-seeded Pirates’ 58-57 upset of No. 2 Iowa State in the 2001 NCAA men’s basketball tournament.

In their sixth year in Division I, the Pirates had long since outgrown the Division II Central Intercollegiate Athletic Association. They moved in 1995 to Division I and the Mid-Eastern Athletic Conference, then to the Big South in 2018 and, this academic year, to the Colonial Athletic Association.

Receiving the CIAA Jimmy Jenkins Legacy Leadership Award in Baltimore in February — eight months after retiring — brought Harvey full-circle as he reflected on his legacy in collegiate athletics.

During the CIAA Hall of Fame recognition ceremony, Harvey spoke of enduring values learned as a youth athlete and basketball standout at Talladega College in Alabama: teamwork, discipline, competitiveness, conditioning of mind and body, coachability, working with others toward a common goal.

He thought of his presidential leadership role model, Samuel Chapman Armstrong, who founded Hampton University in 1868 after leading a Black infantry regiment in the Civil War.

Harvey, who served in the Army following graduation from Talladega, believes, as Chapman did, that while preparing students for employment is key, building character was more important. Men and women of character, together in a common cause, cannot fail.

“I actually modeled my professional career around the theme of teamwork,” he told the gathering at the Baltimore Convention Center. “I often say that ‘The team is the dream.’

“As it relates to athletics, I had some outstanding individuals on my team.”

His scores of Hampton teammates included football coach Joe Taylor, whose HU teams went 136-49-1 in 16 seasons, winning four CIAA and five MEAC titles. They were recognized as Black college national champions four times.

There also was Steve Merfeld, a white basketball coach at a historically Black college and university. Merfeld led the Pirates to consecutive MEAC titles and the upset over Iowa State in 2001, before almost guiding them to a similar upset over Connecticut a year later.

Maurice Pierce has coached men’s and women’s track and field for 25 years, heading the program for almost 20. The Pirates have won 33 conference titles under Pierce, who has produced multiple NCAA individual titlists — two-time Olympic gold medalist Francena McCorory among them.

Director of athletics Eugene Marshall departed Hampton in January after nine years for a similar position at Binghamton University in New York. But not before helping Harvey realize a long-held goal of securing a spot for Hampton as the first historically Black school in the CAA.

“Dr. Harvey had a vision for the university and athletics were part of that vision,” Marshall said. “I knew we were an HBCU but he pulled me aside and said ‘I want more. I want Hampton to be one of the best mid-sized athletic programs in the country and I want us in a conference that can showcase that.’”

“Visionary” is the word all four men use to describe Harvey and his legacy with Hampton athletics.

“William Harvey has always been a visionary,” said Taylor, currently Virginia Union University’s director of athletics, a position he also held for several years while coaching football at Hampton. “That means he sees a path before everybody else does.

“Everything that has happened with Hampton University athletics — the move from Division II to the Division I and the MEAC and everything else — Dr. Harvey envisioned it before it happened.”

Harvey’s vision, athletically and otherwise, was not 20/20 when he walked onto campus in the summer of 1978 after accepting the presidency. There was too much work to do at an institution that had not balanced its budget in decades — something he said Hampton did each of his 44 years as president.

“I couldn’t envision where we are, now,” he said. “The only thing I could envision is that we needed to work hard and improve.

“We needed to improve our facilities and we needed to improve our recruiting.”

That, of course, meant money. Harvey, whose resume includes a doctoral degree from Harvard, took the competitive spirit he inherited from his father, DC Harvey, to get it.

Making as many as 10 fundraising appointments the first four days of each week early in his tenure, he drastically improved Hampton’s bottom line and has continued to do so ever since. Scholarship money at the school, $494,000 in 1978, is $31 million today. An endowment that totaled $29 million then is now almost $400 million.

“We set out together as a team so we could improve things, starting with the finances,” Harvey said. “Everything emanates from a strong financial base.”

Pierce said the track program has never lacked for resources, including the maximum allotment of scholarships for the men’s and women’s programs. The latter is true of football, men’s and women’s basketball among Hampton’s 17 varsity sports.

“He told me whatever plane I needed to jump on, whatever state or country I needed to go to, get us some athletes,” Pierce said. “He was all in. Dr. Harvey realized, although track and field was not a revenue-generating sport, it was a publicity generating sport.”

Olympian Yvette Lewis earned national recognition for the Pirates with NCAA triple jump titles in 2006 and ’07 — an HU athlete’sfirst NCAA Division I individual titles. McCorory followed with three more NCAA 400 titles in 2009 and ’10 before helping Team USA twice win Olympic gold in the 4×400 relay. Kellie Wells was a 2012 Olympic bronze medalist in the 100 hurdles.

Hampton athletics experienced some huge successes in Harvey’s first decade, winning Division II NCAA titles in women’s basketball (1988) and men’s tennis (1989). But Harvey envisioned bigger things, making two significant moves ahead of the Pirates’ 1995 move to Division I.

The first, in 1991, was hiring Taylor, then at CIAA rival Virginia Union, to coach the football team, and then subsequently rebuild Armstrong Stadium. The second was the opening in 1993 of the $12.5 million Convocation Center to replace the Holland Hall gym — smaller than many area high schools — as home for the basketball teams.

“The Lord has ordered my steps,” Harvey said of those and other decisions he’s made at Hampton.

The football program, 2-9 the year before Taylor’s arrival, won three consecutive CIAA titles. Unburdened by teaching classes, sports information and football equipment repair — among his duties as Virginia Union — Taylor said Harvey freed him to only coach football.

“It was an awesome opportunity and I really thank Dr. Harvey for having the vision to create a situation that allows coaches to be winners,” Taylor said. “My college football coach (Darrell Mudra at Western Illinois) told me if you truly want to have an opportunity to win, you have to have a president who wants to win, too.

“If he wants to win, you’ve got a chance because he’ll put the necessary resources in the program.”

Harvey said, “Joe Taylor wasn’t just a good football coach, he was, like Robert Prunty (the Pirates’ current coach), a good man. A man of character.”

The Pirates continued to thrive in football upon their move in 1995 to the MEAC and Division I. One of the standouts of the 2004, ’05 and ’06 MEAC championship teams was defensive end Marcus Dixon. Currently coaching the Denver Broncos’ defensive line, Dixon earned a Super Bowl ring in 2022 as a Los Angles Rams assistant.

His matriculation to Hampton underscores the faith Harvey had in Taylor. Dixon, an African American, had been imprisoned in rural Georgia for aggravated child molestation in a sexual encounter with a white high school classmate.

The conviction generated national attention — amid accusations of racism — and was soon overturned by the Georgia Supreme Court. Taylor gratefully recalled Harvey’s response when he asked to recruit Dixon, who would become team captain, president of the Fellowship of Christian Athletes and first-team All-MEAC while at Hampton.

Harvey said, “If your gut says bring him, I trust you.”

Basketball is a sport dear to Harvey, who scored 36 points in a game against Fisk University while at Talladega College. He said he received invitations to try out for a pair of NBA teams in the early ’60s, but pursued a career in academics after injuring his shooting arm.

As Hampton president, he long had big plans for basketball but said funding, then building, the Convocation Center was a prerequisite. His hiring, with the assistance of athletics director (and future MEAC commissioner) Dennis Thomas, was the second key to Hampton’s rise in basketball.

Harvey said color was not a consideration in the hire.

“My parents (DC and Claudis Harvey) taught me not to discriminate against anybody,” Harvey said. “I have never looked at gender or color in hiring someone.

“I look for the very best person available and the person with the most talent, and that was Steve Merfeld.”

Merfeld, an assistant with 2023 NCAA Elite Eight participant Creighton, said, “I know my being white didn’t matter to him. It was more ‘Let’s get the right man on the job at the right time.’

“He and Dennis Thomas understood it was a process and that things weren’t going to happen overnight — that it takes patience to build things the right way. He was willing to provide the resources necessary to build and become successful.

“Dr. Harvey wanted every department to be successful, but he understood athletics, and specifically men’s basketball, could bring national attention to Hampton University.”

The Pirates made their splash with the victory over Iowa State. It is, hands-down, Harvey’s favorite athletic moment at Hampton and, 22 years later, his memory is vivid.

“I remember the bedlam on the court when (6-foot-8 forward) David Johnson lifted (5-8) Coach Merfeld into the air,” Harvey said of the celebratory moment played on lead-ins to NCAA telecasts for years afterward. “Most of all, I remember how welcoming the people of Boise were to all from Hampton University.”

Harvey penned an op-ed in the Idaho Statesman newspaper thanking waitresses, cab drivers, sales associates, bus drivers, hotel employees and Idaho Gov. Dirk Kempthorne for their hospitality. He also thanked the large group of local fans who donned “Happy St. Pirates Day” T-shirts for Hampton’s second-round game against Georgetown played on St. Patrick’s Day.

Of his conversation with the Catholic Bishop of predominantly white Idaho, he wrote, “I said that if we could bottle what I had witnessed in Boise over the past four days and fling it to every village and hamlet in the world, it would be the most positive thing imaginable.”

Unimaginable in 1978 was the rise of the small HBCU of 2,700 to a school of 6,300 with a rebuilt football stadium and new basketball, tennis and softball venues.

Ditto for the Pirates’ rise from Division II HBCU to the CAA.

“Dr. Harvey has left a legacy they’ll now have to follow,” Marshall said.

And what does Harvey, who retired as president last June — with the title of President Emeritus — see for the future of Hampton U. athletics?

“What I hope is that Hampton University athletics continues to excel,” Harvey said. “By any objective analysis it has exceled over the past 44 years.

“Outside of my immediate family, I love Hampton University more than anything or anybody.”

Marty O’Brien, 757-247-4963, mjobrien@dailypress.com; Twitter @MartyOBrienDP

Significant athletic moments during Dr. William R. Harvey’s tenure as President of Hampton University (1978-2022)

1988: Hampton’s women’s basketball team defeats West Texas State 65-48 to win the Division II national championship.

1989: The Pirates’ men’s tennis team, which won 22 consecutive CIAA titles under Robert Screen, wins the Division II national title. They won also won it in 1976.

1993: The $12.5 million, 150,000-square-foot Convocation Center, which seats 7,200 for basketball and can be expanded to 8,200 for other events, opens next to Armstrong Stadium.

1995: Hampton begins play in the Division I Mid-Eastern Athletic Conference after 83 years in the Central Intercollegiate Athletic Conference, which was founded on the HU campus.

1997: The Pirates win 10-0 at Morgan State to win the MEAC title — their first football conference title in Division I. The Pirates won nine conference titles under legendary coach Joe Taylor.

2001: The Pirates defeat Iowa State 58-57, becoming the fourth No. 15 seed ever to beat a No. 2 seed in the NCAA men’s basketball tournament.

2006: Yvette Lewis wins the NCAA women’s indoor track and field triple jump title to become the first Hampton University athlete to win a Division I championship.

2012: Francena McCorory runs a leg on the USA 4×400 team in London to become the first Hampton University athlete ever to win an Olympic gold medal. McCorory, a three-time NCAA champion while at Hampton, wins a second Olympic gold in the 4×400 in Rio de Janeiro in 2016.

2018: Hampton leaves the MEAC to join the Big South, becoming just the second HBCU in a predominantly white conference.

2022: Hampton leaves the Big South and begins play in the Colonial Athletic Association, becoming the first historically Black College ever to play in the league.