Frank Cuervo Seeks to Carve Out Niche for Little Rock Athletics

Photos by Jamie Lee

Frank Cuervo has big plans for the Little Rock Trojans. Cuervo, who took over as Little Rock athletics director last spring, sees opportunities to carve out a niche for the Trojans in a sports-obsessed state.

Cuervo recently spent part of an afternoon inside the on-campus Jack Stephens Center, the epicenter of Trojans athletics, visiting with Arkansas Money & Politics about everything from the challenges of running a mid-major program to the rise of Little Rock wrestling, playing in-state schools (namely, the Razorbacks), a facilities master plan and much more. Part 2 of that discussion follows.

AMP: The community has shown in the past that it will back Trojan athletics. How do you continue to grow the fan base?

Cuervo: I think a big part of it, for a program our size and scope, is being forward with inviting people to be a part of your success. We’ve done some things here over the last couple of months where previously we didn’t necessarily have a unit or individuals who worked day in and day out on selling tickets. Well, we’ve been able to create a strategic relationship now where we have a significant team that’s out in the marketplace, developing business in that area every day. It’s not part of their job — it is their job. Things like that are significant, making sure that we are active in our community, because then it becomes more than just going to a basketball game.It becomes personal.

You’re coming to a basketball game because, you know what? You saw Mwani Wilkinson or Faith Lee in your classroom, or you had a chance to interact with them at a youth camp, so now, all of a sudden, it’s more than just entertainment. It’s personal. There’s a real relationship there. Sometimes at the higher-profile programs, there are various things that prevent you from having that type of touch-and-feel, one-on-one relationship. I don’t think it’s necessarily any one thing but a combination of factors to be aggressive in going out and winning people’s interests, winning their support and inviting them to be a part of our success on a regular basis.

AMP: In just its second year in the league, Little Rock won the Ohio Valley Conference’s Commissioner’s Cup as best program for both the men and women in 2024. The Trojans are winning in much more than just the flagship sports.

Cuervo: Our women’s basketball program historically has been good, and our men’s basketball team had a great year last year. We’re trending in the same direction this year, but you know, we’ve got a wrestling team that’s ranked 18th in the country. We’ve got two all-Americans wrestling for us right now, so we’ve got programs that are competing at a high level. I think for us, it’s an issue of letting people know that coming to a Little Rock athletics event is accessible, affordable, and you’re able to touch it, feel it and develop more of a relationship with it than, perhaps, you are elsewhere.

AMP: Little Rock launched its wrestling program and jumped right into what was then a Power 5 conference in the Pac-12. Conference realignment reduced full membership to just two schools, but five Mountain West schools are set to join as full members in 2026, as is Gonzaga for everything but football. How does that impact the Trojan wrestling program?

Cuervo: There are several affiliate members who weren’t part of the core Pac-12 before. Right now, we’re on a waiver that extends through next season because we’re below the minimum number of schools to have an automatic qualifier at the NCAA championship, just like everything else, but we anticipate that there’ll be some movement with rebuilding the conference, even though geographically, it seems to not make any sense. That will still be the best home for us from a wrestling standpoint. It makes the most sense for us.

In our discussions with the league, there’s been significant momentum to add a number of other affiliates, really good-quality wrestling schools that will create the best opportunity for us from a wrestling standpoint.

AMP: Greg Hatcher not only brought high school wrestling to the state, but he is also responsible for the launch of the state’s only D-1 college program. Tell us about the growth of the program and how far you think it can climb.

Cuervo: It’s been done in a relatively quick period, too, going from infancy to top 20 in six-plus years. The crusade that Greg led to bring wrestling to the state of Arkansas, and not just at the collegiate level but at the youth and the prep level and the club level and, ultimately, at the Division 1 collegiate level, as well, was just nothing short of remarkable, especially when you consider that there weren’t youth wrestlers in the state of Arkansas 10 or 12 years ago. Now it’s permeated throughout the state. You’ve got close to 100 high schools that are participating in wrestling, and we’re fortunate that we host the state high school wrestling meet here. It’s a great way to grow the sport in the state. I joke with Neil Erisman, our head coach, that eventually, when we get to the point where we’ve got youth wrestlers that have wrestled their entire lives, his job is going to become much easier because he won’t need to recruit everyone from out of state.

Wrestling’s a sport that we’re definitely bullish on. We think we have an opportunity to ultimately compete for a national championship here. That’s a tall mountain to climb, and we understand that, but you know, we think with what we’ve been able to do in wrestling in a short period, it’s an achievable goal.

AMP: On paper, that may seem like a lofty goal, but if you are not in it to win it, why are you in the game?

Cuervo: Exactly. I’ll share a little bit about our strategy moving forward. In this new normal, this new world of college athletics, we’re going to have to make some really challenging decisions about where we place our investments, where we place our resources, in order to compete. Certainly, we have our men’s and women’s basketball programs that are the flagship programs of Little Rock and the Trojans. We’re going to do some things to invest in them at a higher level, whether it be operationally or what we do from a revenue sharing and name, image and likeness standpoint to put us in a position where we’re not only at the top of the OVC, but we want to be at the top of mid-major basketball so that we compare favorably with what they’re doing in the Missouri Valley Conference or the Southern Conference, so that’s our goal — to be able to put our programs in that type of situation.

Then we will also have to make some decisions about other programs that we look to put forward. We’ve got a wrestling program that’s top 20 in the country and has an opportunity to crack the top 10 this year. We’re on a good pace there, so we want to find ways to invest in that program. We’re the defending [regular season] OVC champions in baseball and have a chance to continue to be there. Every year, there’s a program that comes from outside of the Power Four conferences that winds up in Omaha. You know, we want that team to be Little Rock.

We’re going to strategically place our investments and place our resources where they have the best opportunity to come home. Part of that is going out and inviting people to invest in us, to help us get there because once you achieve that type of success, you bring a whole level of recognition to your program, to your university and to your state that you couldn’t hope for otherwise. It’s funny when the 68 names get called on selection Sunday to go to the NCAA tournament. All of a sudden, out of more than 1,000 universities throughout the country, those 68 are in the spotlight. That becomes a weeklong infomercial for your institution. That’s what, ultimately, we’re trying to do. We don’t pretend that athletics is the most important thing that happens on a campus, but in many cases, it’s the most high profile and, with that, gives us a chance to shine a spotlight on all the other great things that are here.

AMP: Tell us about your strategy in rebuilding the athletics department with new roles and new faces.

Cuervo: When I got here 10 months ago and began to look at our personnel, I saw that we didn’t necessarily look like other intercollegiate athletics programs. What we set out to do was identify where we had holes where we needed to be able to provide additional support to our sport programs and our coaches to help them be better. Our coaches have full-time jobs, right? They have to go out and recruit a team, coach a team, manage a team and all the issues that go along with having a program, so it’s our job in administration to be able to provide support, whether that’s in some of the areas that work directly with our student-athletes, like sport performance, academic support, sports medicine or some of the areas that help drive resources for us to invest in our programs, whether that be fundraising and development, marketing and ticket sales, sponsorships, communications.

We wanted to build out a team that was representative of what other thriving intercollegiate athletics programs look like, so we brought on five new leadership team members. That’s our senior staff, the leaders that really help make decisions and run the program. There’s Dan Crowley, who’s our deputy athletics director and chief revenue officer; Nate Olson, who has been a member of the local media, is our associate AD for communications; Brandy Dixon, who had been with us previously in a communications role, is our associate athletics director for marketing and community engagement; and Noah Henkel, who had been raising money for the law school, came over to us. He’s a former student-athlete and will help us from a development standpoint.

Then Garrett Ton is our associate AD for facilities and operations and will help make sure that this building and our other facilities stay strong, so that’s what I refer to as our starting five, the first group we brought on board to really help build out our support team. Right now, we’re in the process of conducting a search for three other positions, with three more to come later in the first quarter. When we get to that point, we will be in a situation where we’ve got the support mechanism in place to provide the highest level of support for our coaches, for our student-athletes and for our sport programs, whether that’s going out and raising money, promoting those programs to be able to get the turnstiles to click, and developing relationships with the media and gaining exposure on a broader scale.

AMP: NIL obviously has changed the landscape of college sports, but in your experience, outside of the few highly publicized cases, what effect has it had on the average college athlete?

Cuervo: It’s funny you should ask because I was just thinking about that the other day. When I’m around our student-athletes — and right now, the majority of NIL money that we have going through our program is with our men’s basketball program — I don’t get a sense that they put on airs or feel in any way entitled. It’s an opportunity that they have now, and it’s the smart thing to do. For some, it’s a situation where it’s a way for them to help their families. I don’t get a sense that the attitude has changed. I still enjoy being around our teams, whether it’s our basketball programs or other student-athletes. They’re generally Type A, smart kids who are competitive. They’re wired for success and are willing to put the time and the work in to get there.

AMP: Is it possible for a Type B personality to excel in college athletics?

Cuervo: You have to be driven because you’re involved in so many things, right? Not only are you an athlete and you’ve got the time and effort and attention to your sport, but you’re going to school full time. You’re making sure that you’re taking care of business in the classroom. Then there are other demands placed on you as an athlete, whether it’s traveling, and so you may be missing classroom time, and you have to be organized and keep up with schoolwork, and then those who are competitive in sports generally tend to be competitive in other areas of life, as well, whether it’s what they’re doing academically or something else that they’re doing, so I generally think that college athletes are pretty Type A. They’re driven.

It’s also one of the reasons why many employers heavily recruit former student-athletes. They know that they can perform when the pressure’s on, that they’ve had to balance multiple interests at the same time. There are a number of major companies that do a heavy part of their new employee recruitment based specifically on student-athletes.

AMP: As you know, Hunter Yurachek reversed an old University of Arkansas policy against scheduling in-state teams. Now that the Hogs schedule them, how does it benefit Little Rock and other in-state schools?

Cuervo: I think it just makes sense for everybody. I understand the policy of the past and, look, perhaps at that time, it was the right thing to do, but I think in terms of creating interest in college sports, whether it’s on the basketball court or on the soccer pitch, it makes sense. We keep money in the state of Arkansas when we do things like that. That’s why you saw Arkansas play Pine Bluff in football to open last season. I just think it makes too much sense given our proximity and our shared values to not continue to find every opportunity to play. I’m not sure I can think of a sport that we both offer where we haven’t competed.

AMP: How important are things like logos, school colors and mascots to a program’s ability to market itself, and are there any logo or wordmark changes on the horizon?

Cuervo: That’s kind of our unique positioning there. From our perspective, everything is Little Rock. It’s Little Rock this, Little Rock that, so using that Trojans moniker, that’s what sets us apart, even in college athletics as a whole. At the D-1 level, you’ve got three Trojans — us, USC and Troy. That’s a distinguishing factor.

The university uses the athletics marks and promotion, as well. I think from our end, being as consistent as possible with the use of our logos and marks, even the references to Little Rock and Trojans, that helps build up a head of steam that people know, ‘Hey, this is who we’re talking about when we say Little Rock or we say Trojans,’ so being consistent, everything from those verbal and written references to what our uniforms look like. When we play in the NCAA tournament, for example, you’re on center stage, so you want to make sure that you look the part and you’re represented well and consistently there. A lot goes into that. It’s not a flippant decision but one that should be consciously made. It helps develop affinity because ultimately, what your mascot is or what your colors are or how you’re represented, that helps develop affinity. You know, there may be somebody that doesn’t have any clue about UA Little Rock, and they see us, and that starts them to investigate — or even locally, someone develops an affinity because they like our mascot or whatever the case is, and as a result, they develop an interest, and that interest is cultivated over time.

So, you know, sometimes it can be very small things that are just sort of the first spark that ultimately, you know, blaze a fire.

Cuervo said he believes the Trojan mascot is a distinguishing factor for Little Rock athletics.

AMP: What are your plans facility-wise? Little Rock has facilities on campus for all sports except for baseball, which plays just down the road at Gary Hogan Field.

Cuervo: When you look at how we invest in baseball, we’re right there at the top [of the OVC], whether it’s coach’s salaries or what we do from an operational perspective. We’re starting to take a look at what might be the future of a new facility for Trojan baseball. We’ve been at Hogan Field now for almost 40 years. We’d like to be able to find a solution for a home that makes sense.

We’ve actually just launched a facilities master-planning process that’ll take a look at a variety of things — I mean, one, what the future of this building is. Yeah, the Stephens Center will be 20 years old later this year in November, and it served us really well for two decades, but we need to figure out what do we need to do to invest in the building to make it work for us for the next 20 years? That’ll be key.

We’re just getting that started, and that’s something that should be completed here later this spring. That then gives us a springboard to be able to go out to our donors and our supporters and say, ‘This is where we envision our program going. Here are opportunities to invest in what we’re doing.’ Then, you know, the light will come on for everyone at different times and in different ways, but it gives us a good basis to be able to go to market.

AMP: Is the athletics department basically the front porch of any university?

Cuervo: Absolutely. I use the analogy that athletics is the spotlight that shines on everything else that the university is doing. We don’t pretend to be the most important thing that happens here. There are far more pressing matters than the result of the game, but oftentimes, we’re the most high profile, and that creates a significant opportunity. It also creates a responsibility to make sure that we’re doing things right and representing the university in a first-class manner, and I think our 11 head coaches, our 15 sport programs and 275 student-athletes do that.