Well, welcome to On the Bench. I am your host for today's episode,

Brendan Sonone. I'm joined by Chris Nee. Hello, Christopher. Hey, Brendan. Oh,

look at you being all nice because we have a special guest. That is

if this used new director of athletics, yeah, you know him before from his previous title as

a seminal booster CEO when he's been on the podcast previously, new title, new year,

but same old Michael Alfred. Michael, welcome to On the Bench. How's it going?

Appreciate it, guys. How are you all doing? Happy New Year to you. I hope you had a great Christmas,

good holiday season with family and ready to get the New Year going.

We did thank you. Happy New Year to you as well. So congratulations on the new on the new gig,

the new job. How's it? Well, I'll let Chris take over. He has a few questions to ask at first.

What have the first few days of changing offices and changing chairs Ben like for you? How has it

been different? You know, it's really exciting. Chris is getting back to one being the chair,

but the relationship you build with student athletes and you know, I'm always going to be on the phone

constantly with donors talking about the program, talking about our vision, working

had our first head coaches meeting the yesterday, yesterday. And that really went well,

just kind of introducing myself, even though we know each other and been here a year and a half,

but it is a different role and it is letting them know my personality of being present

and really just building relationships, going down the training room, just now talking to

student athletes, checking in on them, had a student athlete who had to have a surgery

went by and saw them in the hospital just checking, you know, just really those relationships

is something that I'm really excited about to make sure they understand. We support them,

coaching staff understands that we support them and trying to give them the resources to be successful.

...