Eastern Washington narrows athletic director search to three candidates

Eastern Washington University has narrowed its search for a new athletics director to three candidates, each announced Thursday.

EWU is looking to replace Lynn Hickey, who will hold the position through the end of May. Hickey, who has been at EWU since 2018, first announced in February her plan to retire.

The three candidates are Jim Sarra, an assistant professor of sports management in the graduate program at Western Illinois University; Tim Collins, Fresno State’s senior associate athletics director for development; and Elizabeth Jarnigan, the executive associate athletics director and senior woman administrator at Valparaiso University.

All three will be on campus for daylong interviews, beginning with Sarra on Thursday, followed by Collins on June 1 and Jarnigan on June 5. On each of those days, the candidate will hold an open forum from 3 to 4:30 p.m. These are open to the public and will be held in the Catalyst Building 172 on the EWU campus. They also will be accessible via a Zoom webinar.

Jarnigan for the past two years has been the sport administrator for 10 programs at Valparaiso – including its football team – in addition to overseeing the department’s internal operations. Jarnigan was the athletics director at Southern Illinois University, a Division I program, from 2019 to 2021.

Before that, Jarnigan worked in athletics administration at Air Force, San Jose State, Tulsa and Briar Cliff College. She was also a women’s volleyball coach at three colleges from 1989 to 1999. She graduated in 1987 from St. Olaf (Minnesota) College.

Collins has been at Fresno State since 2018. In his current role, he manages revenue development and fundraising activities for the athletics department. From 2013 to 2018 he held a similar post at the University of Wyoming.

Before that, Collins was at Black Hills State in South Dakota, where he first worked as an assistant basketball coach before transitioning into an administrative role. He was on the basketball staff at three programs, including Lewis-Clark State College from 2005 to 2010.

Since 2019, Sarra has worked as a professor at two universities. Prior to that, he was the athletics director at the University of Illinois Springfield, a Division II institution, from 2016 to 2019.

Sarra worked in the athletics department of the University of Texas-San Antonio from 2005 to 2016, and for the past seven years was its deputy AD while Hickey was UTSA’s athletics director.

Sarra is originally from West Seneca, New York.