James Downer was named the Saint Francis Director of Athletics in July 2020 and has transformed the Red Flash into a perennial power in the Northeast Conference.
During Downer’s tenure, Saint Francis has captured 10 Northeast Conference Championships, appeared in four NCAA Tournaments, and has supervised nine NEC Coach of the Year recipients.
In 2023-24, the Red Flash finished second in the NEC Commissioner's Cup Standing after finishing third in 2022-23. Saint Francis saw the Softball team return to the NCAA Tournament and earning the third NCAA win in school history with a 1-0 win against Siena. Softball, Men's Soccer and Men's Volleyball each won the NEC regular season thanks to going undefeated in league play. The Flash became the first school in NEC history to have student-athletes earn both the Male and Female Team Student-Athlete of the Year and four student-athletes were named NEC Scholar-Athletes of the Year for their sports. In addition for the second year in row, Saint Francis had at least one student-athlete nominated by the NEC for NCAA Woman of the Year with two female senior student-athletes moving on in 2023-24 and one in 2022-23.
The 2022-23 campaign saw the Red Flash achieve unparalleled success as every program qualified for postseason play, the first instance in Saint Francis Athletics history in which all teams competed past the regular season highlighted by NEC Championships in Football, Men’s Volleyball, Women’s Outdoor Track & Field and Softball.
In 2021-22 Saint Francis claimed NEC Championships in Women’s Outdoor Track & Field along with Softball while a shortened COVID 2021-21 year saw the Red Flash attain NEC Championships in both Women’s Outdoor Track & Field and Softball as well.
However, the success has not been regulated to the field as Downer has overseen six of the highest ten semester GPA’s in department history and has maintained a streak of fifty straight semesters in which Red Flash student-athletes achieved a GPA of 3.0 or higher. The Red Flash were honored with the NEC Institutional Academic Award in both 2020-21 and 2021-22 and the NEC Building Communities Award in 2021-22 and 2022-23.
SFU has also extended its external footprint during Downer’s tenure, launching a mobile application in 2021, extending a long-term apparel partnership with Under Armour and signing the largest sponsorship in department history with Ready Nutrition in 2023.
Downer was also named to a four-year term on the NCAA Women’s Soccer Committee in 2023 and additionally served as on the East Regional Advisory Committee for FCS Football.
Downer joined the Red Flash after spending three years at Eastern Kentucky, where he served as the school's Senior Associate Athletics Director. Over his tenure at EKU, Downer served as the sport administrator for football and men's basketball and supervised several departments, including compliance, media relations, ticket operations, marketing, and development. Downer oversaw football and men's basketball scheduling and played pivotal roles in several coaching hires, secured athletic department contracts with Adidas and Learfield/IMG College, and launched the EKUSports Mobile App.
Prior to his time in Richmond, Downer worked for five years at Presbyterian, joining the Blue Hose as an Associate Athletic Director in 2012 before being elevated to Senior Associate AD in 2015. Downer aided in the departmental transition after reclassification from NCAA Division II to Division I, while overseeing day-to-day internal operations of a department consisting of 15 sports and 350 student-athletes. He assisted in the hiring of four head coaches while in Clinton and secured numerous games and accompanying exposure for the PC football program against FBS competition in addition to facility improvements throughout the department. Downer served on the Big South Conference Championships Committee from 2015-17.
Downer began his postgraduate career at Central Oklahoma, where he served in the dual role of Assistant Director of Compliance and Media Relations, before joining Oklahoma City University as an Assistant Athletic Director and earning a Division I administrator position at Nicholls State, where he served as Assistant AD for Compliance.
Downer is a 2002 graduate of Millsaps College, where he was a student-athlete with the Majors' baseball program. He earned his master's degree from the University of Oklahoma in 2006.
A native of Springfield, Illinois, James and his wife Erin have two sons, Max and Caden.
