Mike Guardabascio
It was a weird weekend to be Andy Fee.
The now-former Long Beach State athletic director had his last day at the university on Friday, having spent the last week saying goodbyes. Then on Sunday, he was a spectator at the Long Beach State and Washington women’s soccer game, a bizarre coincidental quirk of timing that saw him saying goodbye to his old school and hello to his new one.
“It’s pretty crazy that it worked out like that,” he said at George Allen Field on Sunday.
Fee is headed to Seattle to become the new Deputy Athletic Director at UW—as in, by the time you’re reading this, he’s headed there. He’s getting on the plane with the Huskies after the game along with his wife Nicole to head to Seattle, where he will start his first day at his new job on Monday.
There were some tears spilled at the soccer game, at what some staff and fans dubbed the “Andy Fee Bowl.” Fee, rocking a Washington polo and purple shoes, made the rounds at the soccer game to say last farewells, accompanied by Nicole. He put a Beach longsleeve on over the Huskies polo to take some pictures with the LBSU men’s volleyball team, with whom he shared a special bond as they won back-to-back NCAA titles during Fee’s tenure.
The team presented Fee with a signed ball and some heartfelt and emotional thank yous. Then after the game was over it was off to the airport and onto the future for Fee. For Long Beach State, there’s plenty of questions as the school welcomes in Ted Kadowaki as its interim AD and begins a search for a new AD, likely to be finalized some time at the end of the school year.
LBSU men’s volleyball coach Alan Knipe joked that the Sunday afternoon experience for Fee was a little like when MLB players are traded from team to team and occasionally end up walking across the field to switch dugouts when a trade happens on gameday.
Fee isn’t heading to Washington before getting one last glimpse of Long Beach scenery. He hosted the UW women’s soccer team at the Boathouse on the Bay Sunday after the game.
