Macalester athletic director abruptly leaves post

Kim Chandler is out as longtime Macalester College athletic director.

An e-mail sent Monday to her school address received an automated reply: "Please note that Kim Chandler is no longer with Macalester College." The athletic director's web page lists "To Be Announced" where her name had been.

Matt McLagan, spokesman for the athletic department, said only said that she "has left Macalester as the director of athletics." McLagan said she left last week.

Barbara Laskin, spokeswoman for the administration, said, "There is nothing more we can say" about Chandler's departure.

Chandler was not immediately available for comment.

This had been Chandler's ninth year heading athletics at the private NCAA Division III school in St. Paul, which has an enrollment of roughly 2,100. Along with overseeing the Scots' 21 men's and women's teams, she was in charge of its physical education program, club sports, intramurals and operations of its athletic facilities.

McLagan said the search for a successor to lead the Minnesota Intercollegiate Athletic Conference (MIAC) member — football excluded — has yet to begin and an interim director has not been named.

Among the school's top accomplishments in athletics during her tenure was the football team in 2014 making the NCAA playoffs for the first time in school history, going 9-1 and winning the Midwest Conference title. It left the MIAC in 2001.

Chandler joined Macalester in the summer before the 2008-09 school year. In October 2009, she received the National Association of Collegiate Women Athletics Administrators Administrator of the Year award for Division III.

Before Macalester, Chandler was the athletic director at Beloit College in Wisconsin. Her career in women's coaching and athletics administration began in 1988 as a graduate assistant for Bowling Green women's basketball, then to Florida Southern as an assistant coach and then head coach for Division I California State, Northridge.

She graduated in 1988 after playing basketball for four seasons at Ohio Northern, where she was captain and helped lead the team to a 23-4 mark her senior season.

Paul Walsh • 612-673-4482