Ricks revisited

REXBURG, Idaho — Professional Utopia was waiting for Garth Hall in southeastern Idaho. He just didn't realize it.

A longtime assistant coach at the Division I level, Hall once turned

down an opportunity to run the Ricks College football program because

he wanted nothing to do with junior college athletics. That was before

he became disillusioned with big-time college sports.

By the time Hall ended up in Rexburg, he was simply looking for an

opportunity to "change lives." He found the environment he was looking

for at Ricks College, where the program matched his ideal of what

athletics should be.

"This was as good as it gets," said Hall, who in 1997 became athletic

director over a department that sponsored 264 scholarship athletes.

Three years later, Hall had a lot more lives to change.On June 21, 2000, LDS Church President Gordon B. Hinckley announced

that Ricks would begin making the transition from two-year junior

college to a four-year institution called Brigham Young

University-Idaho. It was also announced that the school, owned and

operated by The Church of Jesus Christ of Latter-day Saints, would

phase out intercollegiate athletics and implement an activity program

for the entire student body.

"We gave up something good for something better," Hall said.

When he looks at the evolution of the BYU-Idaho activities program,

which serves between 8,000 and 10,000 students per semester, Hall calls

it a miracle.

He isn't the only one who uses that word to describe what's occurred in

Rexburg. Over the past eight years, BYU-Idaho has rapidly expanded in