By Will Vandervort.

By Will Vandervort

CLEMSON — As he heads out towards Six Mile or Seneca, Dan Radakovich can’t help but smile. Those rides always take him back to his childhood when he was growing up in Monaca, PA.

“Clemson is kind of like my hometown, except there is this big college in the middle of it,” Radakovich said. “As you drive outside of Clemson and get into Anderson, Six Mile or Seneca, you could easily be in Hopewell, Aliquippa, Monaca or Center Township, and you would see the same things.

“I think that is another reason why I find that Clemson really feels like home. There are a lot of similarities.”

Growing up the son of steel mill worker, Radakovich has a great appreciation for small towns like Clemson and what it stands for. It’s those qualities that make places like Monaca and Clemson so special to those that call them home.

Radakovich, who was named Clemson’s new athletic director on October 29 of this year, is now settling into his new hometown, while tying up some loose ends back in Atlanta when he was the athletic director at Georgia Tech the last five years.

“I have an apartment here, and we are in the process of selling our house in Atlanta, and whenever that happens, Marcie (his wife) will in earnest come up and begin to look for a new place to live,” Radakovich said.

Growing up in Monaca, a small town 40 minutes from Pittsburgh, Radakovich learned to value what hard work meant. His father, Dan Sr., worked as a steel mill worker when the steel industry was booming. A lot of his aunts and uncles worked in the industry as well.

“On my Mom’s side of the family, there were 13 brothers or sisters. They were all basically in the same area and were all basically in the same business for the most part – the steel business or the manufacturing business,” he said. “I saw people work hard, and that’s really the way I grew up.”

Radakovich himself worked in the steel mills during the summers while he was going to college. It was in those hot summers, he really appreciated the value of getting an education.

“I had the opportunity a couple of summers when I was in college to work in the steel mills,” he said. “If you didn’t think about it before, you did after those summers. ‘Hey, those books are important so how do you move beyond that.’

“It is hard work working in the steel mills, and I have great respect for the folks that worked there for 25, 30 or 35 years. It is a very different existence.”

But it was that very existence that helped Radakovich prosper into a successful athletic administrator. While studying for his master’s at the University of Miami, he soon discovered his passion in sports administration.

“I got to know some people through some interactions at the University of Miami after I left in the athletic program,” he said. “I was fortunate enough to get a job within their athletic program and did that for a couple of years. It was a really great experience.”

After going into private industry for a while, Radakovich was brought back into athletics when a good friend of his became the Athletic Director at Long Beach State in California. Radakovich used that five-year experience as a spring board which led him to stops at South Carolina, American University, LSU and finally as the former athletic director at Georgia Tech.

“There is not a whole lot I would change,” he said. “This has been an incredible journey. Being at Clemson is a new chapter in this journey and Marcie and I are looking forward to it. It’s going to be a lot of fun.”

Especially when they go for a drive, like those he used to have when he was a kid growing up in Monaca.