In 1965, AU hired Robert Frailey as its new Athletic Director. Frailey became the university's longest-serving AD, retiring in 1987 after 22 years on the job. Frailey head previously served for 16 years as coach of the men's swim team, and later coached the men's tennis, golf, and soccer teams. While AD, Frailey moved AU from NCAA Division II to NCAA Division I, and hired some of the best basketball coaches in the nation: Gary Williams, later head coach at the University of Maryland; Jim Lynam, later head coach of the Washington Bullets professional basketball team; Tom Davis, later head coach at the University of Iowa; Tom Young, later head coach at Rutgers University; Ed Tapscott, later an NBA executive for several teams; and Fran Dunphy, later coach at the University of Pennsylvania and Temple University. In 1979, Frailey named and co-founded the Colonial Athletic Association, the NCAA Division I league in which AU teams now began to participate. As his career neared its end, Fraily pushed hard for construction of a new sports arena at American University to replace the Leonard Center (later named the Cassell Center), which the university had purchased in 1946. The new facility, Bender Arena opened in 1988. The swimming pool was named Frailey Pool in his honor.