Maryland has hired a search firm to help find a new Athletic Director

Maryland has hired a search firm and named a committee to find the successor to Kevin Anderson. Both were announced Thursday through a statement on the school website.

In what university president Wallace Loh termed to be a “national and confidential” search, the Terps have named Turnkey Talent Recruiters as the search firm they’ll use to help. The university’s eight-person committee features influential donor Barry Gossett and field hockey coach Missy Meharg and is chaired by Darryl Pines, dean of the A.J. Clark Engineering School.

The search is expected to be conducted in privacy, per Loh:

​A national search​ means that we ​seek and consider all ​qualified candidates. ​A confidential search​ means that​ we secure the privacy of all candidates. The only candidate who will be identified ​publicly is the one ​named​ as the new Athletic Director. ​

Turnkey will have two consultants working on the search: Len Perna, Esquire, and Gene DeFilippo. Perna is the founder of Turnkey, while DeFilippo is the managing partner and a former athletic director at Villanova, Boston College and South Carolina-Upstate. The firm has also helped Georgetown, Tennessee, Michigan, Nebraska and Alabama find ADs in their respective searches.

The only known candidate as of now is interim AD Damon Evans; depending on how “confidential” this search ends up being, Evans may be the only known candidate until the process concludes. Other names have been rumored, but we’ll see what leaks out.

Here’s the full eight-person search committee:

• Darryl Pines, Dean of the university engineering school — committee chair
• Barry Gossett, chairman of the university Board of Regents — committee vice chair
• Missy Meharg, field hockey head coach
• Andrew Valmon, track and field head coach
• Cherryl Harrison, athletics department director of development
• Nicolas Hadley, faculty athletics representative and philosophy professor
• Michele Eastman, assistant president of the university and Loh’s chief of staff
• Mark Butler, trustee on the board of the UMD Foundation