Interview with new UAPB Athletic Director

PINE BLUFF, Ark. (KTHV) -- The University of Arkansas at Pine Bluff has a new athletic director and he sat down with Mark Edwards to talk Golden Lions sports.

Lonza Hardy, Jr. resigned from his position as athletics director at Hampton University effective September 6, 2011. Hardy, who has held the post since 2007, will become Athletics Director at the University of Arkansas at Pine Bluff.

During Hardy's stint at Hampton, the HU athletics program has captured 11 championships, including titles in women's basketball, men's basketball, women's cross country, women's indoor track and field and women's outdoor track and field. The banner year for the program was in 2010-11, when four HU teams captured league titles and both the men's and women's basketball teams earned bids to the NCAA tournament after winning their respective Mid-Eastern Athletic Conference tournaments.

"We are very privileged to have been able to recruit someone with his qualifications and accomplishments," said Dr. Lawrence A. Davis, Jr., UAPB's chancellor.

In each of Hardy's years at HU, the athletics program captured the Mary McLeod Bethune Trophy, symbolic of having the best overall women's sports program in the MEAC. Last summer, the university's athletics program was ranked as the No.1 athletics program among the Historically Black Colleges and Universities (HBCUs) by the Learfield Sports Group, which also ranked the program among the nation's top 150 programs overall. The HU Athletics Hall of Fame was also initiated under Hardy's guidance two years ago.

(Source: University of Arkansas at Pine Bluff)