From a star soccer player and member of the Tufts Beelzebubs to his current post as Athletic Director - with an assortment of stops in between - Bill Gehling has done it all at Tufts.
Though he'd be the first to tell you that's not true, it seems Gehling was destined to devote his life to the Tufts community. Both his parents attended the University, as did a number of other relatives. And his daughter, Jennifer, is currently a freshman at Tufts.
"Tufts was not drummed into me as a kid," Gehling said. "It had what I was looking for. It was in the Boston area. I had no divine plan that I was going to go to Tufts and then work here. It surprised me and my college friends."
With so many connections to Tufts, one might think Gehling is a Medford or Somerville local. But that's not the case - he lived just outside of Cleveland until he was ten, before moving to Long Island.
Gehling graduated in 1974 with a degree in Child Studies and a legacy as one of Tufts' most decorated athletes. During his soccer career, he was named a New England All-Star twice and a Greater Boston League All-Star four times. In addition, Gehling held the school's all-time soccer scoring records of 39 goals and 101 points until Matt Adler surpassed him in 1999.
Upon graduation, Gehling was undecided about his future. "I had a folk band after I graduated and I had a lot of interests and things just developed here at Tufts," he said.
Despite being hired as a teacher at an alternative school in Somerville, Gehling could not get soccer out of his blood. A year after graduating, he began volunteering with Tufts men's soccer.
In 1979, Gehling was hired as a part-time women's soccer coach at the University and balanced his work as coach and teacher until 1981, when the women's head coaching job became a full-time position. At that time, he also became the head coach of the golf team.
Though he stopped teaching, he still did not view coaching as his final stop in the professional world. In 1979, he picked up a master's degree in education from Tufts.
"For the first four or five years that I was coaching, I assumed that it was a temporary decision," Gehling said. "At the same time I was taking graduate courses in computer science."
Slowly, however, coaching grew on Gehling and, in his words, he "caught the coaching bug" and decided to make it his life's work.
"The computer work interested me intellectually but I wasn't passionate about it," Gehling said. "I was passionate about coaching and I felt I was making a difference in some lives. [Coaching is about] a lot more than winning and losing. I decided to stick with it."
And stick with it he did. For 20 years, from 1979 until 1998, Gehling served as the women's soccer coach, compiling a 165-90-36 record for a .629 career winning percentage. In his final season as head coach, Gehling led the team to the quarterfinals of the NCAA Tournament.
Midway through the 1980s, Gehling stopped coaching golf and began doing administrative work. In retrospect, this was the move that laid the groundwork for his ascension to his present position of athletic director. "I slowly started to take on some administrative duties without a title," Gehling said. "After about ten years I was named Assistant Athletic Director."
Gehling held the assistant post for ten years, while still coaching the women's soccer team. Eventually, he was named the associate athletic director.
"[Former Athletic Director] Rocky Carzo gave me a great amount of responsibility which helped me when I applied for the job [of Athletic Director]," Gehling said.
On July 1, 1999 Gehling succeeded the retiring Carzo to become the fifth athletic director in the history of the University.
In his 30-plus year involvement in Tufts' athletics, Gehling said the biggest changes he has seen in Tufts sports have come as a result of Title IX. "In the early 1970's women's sports were under Jackson College and had little support and weren't taken seriously. Title IX was why Tufts started the [women's] soccer team. Tufts started complying with title IX in the late 1970's and I was a beneficiary and that's how I got my job."
Gehling became so involved with women's sports that two times during his tenure as the women's soccer coach, he turned down the opportunity to become head coach of the men's team on which he once starred.
"Several years into my tenure with the women, the men's job opened up," Gehling said. "And the athletic director assumed I would prefer the men's job. I considered it, but I was more interested in building the [women's program] from scratch. I was able to play an integral role in women's soccer evolution from [a team] with very little skill to almost national champions."
Interestingly, the team did make the national championship game - but in 2000, the year after Gehling stopped coaching. The coach of that team was Martha Whiting, who played for Gehling as an undergraduate before serving as his assistant coach for seven seasons.
After spending years on the upward climb, Gehling now sits at the top of the athletic department - and though it would seem the next step is moving on to a bigger school that puts more of an emphasis on athletics, Gehling insists this is not the case.
"I don't see myself leaving Tufts," Gehling said. "I've got a lot to do [here]. There is no place I'd rather be."
