Q: So my first question is, you’ve been here for a year at NEC how do you like it so far?
A: Well, I love NEC. You know the reason why I came here is because I thought that this was a sleeping giant. It has a world of potential; we have an exceptionally talented coaching staff. I think our teams have a lot of room to grow, and to be highly competitive. It was just a matter of tweaking our culture a little bit, and thinking more about the future, as opposed to what may have happened in the past. We’ve been putting a lot of emphasis on expanding our recruiting efforts, and providing these highly qualified athletes with an exceptional college experience. What really makes New England College special, as you know, are the people. The campus is nice and small, a beautiful one, but the interactions that I have with the student athletes on a daily basis, as well as with all the faculty and staff, aren’t ones that you can really get on a big campus. But here the closeness of the college helps to develop some great working relationships with people, and I think that’s what makes NEC special.
Q: What things have you done or implemented in the past year that you’ve seen have a positive impact on the athletic department here at NEC?
A: I think the first and most obvious thing are the enhancements that have been made to sport’s facilities. It was one of my priorities when I first came on campus, and we did it for a couple of reasons. Number one, we wanted our students, as well as our faculty and staff, to want to utilize the facilities and feel proud to be a Pilgrim, even if they just came in for a game and aren’t participating, but are there being a spectator. It also enhances our recruiting process. Every time we bring a recruit onto campus it’s great for them to see that we really have some nice places here. We started with the Fitness Center last Spring, by bringing in new equipment and doing a lot of painting and branding, which is a really big part of what we’ve done with the facilities. There’s a sense of pride when you see the logos and school colors all over everything.
I think with the Fitness Center alone, I’m seeing a significant increase in the number of people using it; they’re excited to be there. We have new half racks and platforms. Even the new flat screen TVs are a good addition. Also, we went in and redesigned the entire floor plan, in order to make it more spacious, so that our athletes can maximize the space the facility has. I couldn’t be anymore happy with that.
The basketball gym, as you know as a basketball player, underwent a complete overhaul. We’re not quite done yet, as we still have to paint the upper part of the walls and the ceiling, but the wall pads with the branding on it, really makes that place pop; as well as the grey paint on the walls with the red stripe. We redesigned the basketball floor by adding a lot more color into it and thickened the out-of-bounds lines. We’re just trying to make it a really nice environment in there. We’re starting some upgrades now with the ice arena that we’ll continue improving on; then we’ll start work on the ramp.
The goal is to convey to our student athletes the culture, or direction, of what it means to consistently be a champion in everything that they do. And the huge mural is pretty cool. We have plans to put on the opposite wall a 16-foot display case where we are going to showcase all of our championship plaques, our rookies of the year, and players of the year. It’s really just a wall of success. So now when someone walks through that area, their eyes should pop and say, “Wow, this is really incredible.”
I see the ramp area as a testament to athletics at New England College. It connects everything, from the rink to the training room, to the coaching offices, to the fitness center, and to the gym. So one way or another, if you have any kind of interest or affiliation to NEC athletics, you’re walking through that ramp at least once a day, so it was important for us to know that.
The biggest element to all of this, is that we had a significant amount of investment and help from the coaching staff and student athletes in getting all of this done. When you see coaches taking time out of their weekends to come in and paint walls, and student athletes moving all of the equipment and helping with all the things that we do, that just creates ownership for everyone. I was really excited to see how everyone came together for a common purpose, with a lot of enthusiasm and passion. We had a vision and we wanted to see it through, and now you’re seeing the culmination of all that hard work, which is really cool.
In addition, we’re always trying to support the college’s strategic initiative of increasing enrollment so we’ve looked to different sports. Of course, we’re adding women’s volleyball next Fall. Today, we announced the addition of varsity wrestling, so it’s really cool that we have a few other things on the horizon that we’re evaluating. I think what you’re starting to see this past year and will continue to see is that we want to continue to grow our department and the number of sport offerings for our student population. Last year we had about 287 unique athletes, people who played one or two sports and we’re hoping by next year we’ll be well over 400. Our coaches are aggressively recruiting all over to try and strengthen our teams.
We always think about campus culture; we’ve put a lot of things in place with our games management, like how we present our games. You’ll see down at the fields now all of our game workers wearing red shirts and khaki pants, so that they’re uniform. We also think a lot about the fan experience and the student athlete experience. We want to provide an exceptional experience for anybody who is part of a New England College athletics event.
The other thing that we did is really make a commitment to enhancing our social media presence, and I think we’ve done a lot with the videos and season previews, interviewing our athletes and coaches after games. We present a lot of that information through Twitter, Facebook, Instagram, and now Snapchat. We’ve had an enormous and tremendous response from parents, athletes, and staff members, because they always like to see our student athletes being interviewed on social media talking about their experiences.
Renee Hellert, our Associate Director of Athletics, has done an amazing job taking hold of that aspect. Not only does she create a great sense of pride for our entire community of athletes, as it helps enormously with our recruiting, but now all of the athletes out there can see that, and it creates a lot of buzz for New England College athletics.
Q: What can we expect from NEC athletics this year?
A: Well, I’m expecting that our teams are going to be highly competitive. Our coaches worked really hard throughout last year trying to build their rosters, and I see our athletes on campus with a different kind of jump in their step this year. Everybody is really excited to be back, and I think the environment that we’ve been creating with the facilities is the reason for this. We’ve re-allocated some resources to make it a better athletic experience for our athletes. There’s a different sense of enthusiasm that I’m seeing this year versus what I experienced when I first came on campus last October.
I can’t be any happier about the direction that we’re heading. Just looking at our Fall teams, both soccer teams are really strong, our field hockey team has vastly improved. Alex Norden is doing an exceptional job with our cross country team, really bringing a team concept to them, and our rugby team is competitive. Just from looking at the Fall, we should have a really competitive season, as well as with our Winter and Spring teams.
We continue to evaluate a lot of different things. We’re upgrading the baseball field as I talk to you right now, and we’ll continue to look at all of our facilities to figure out ways to improve what we have, and maybe which new sports we can offer in the future. We’re actually creating a new online webstore, that’s through Advanced Online, which is really great. And we’ll be launching that within 6 weeks. It’s going to have a whole lot of really great merchandise that we can offer anyone who’s interested in NEC athletics, or just buying NEC gear in general. It’s all Under Armor and Nike gear, and we can place logos on golf balls.
One thing we wanted to do this year was to find and give ourselves an identity. So far, we’ve found about 7 or 8 different logos that we’ve consolidated to give ourselves a great brand. Right now, we’re using basically three different logos, but I really want to make it so that when someone sees the logo they immediately identify it with New England College athletics. This logo will be rolled out on the new online store.
Q: What is your vision for NEC athletics?
A: I’m hoping that NEC athletics will become an elite athletics program, where our student athletes have an exceptional experience that is highly competitive. When I think about the whole act, like the champion concept we’ve created for this year, we’re looking for the overall student athlete. Not only do we want our athletes to be exceptional on the ice, on the floor, on the turf, but we want them to be great in the classroom, as well as positively contributing to our entire campus. We’re making some great strides, and I think everybody here should be really proud of what we’re accomplishing with our athletics department.
I think it’s only going to keep getting better, because everyone right now is sensing this idea of “how far can we go.” I gave all of our coaches a desk acrylic at our first staff meeting, and it says “dare to soar.” Basically your attitude always determines your altitude in life, and the whole thing here with “dare to soar” is to not be afraid to go as far as you can with your teams. Be aggressive and keep working hard, because great things are going to happen for us.
Q: What would you like the student body to know?
A: I want the study body to know how important they are to us. Athletics is great for our athletes and the experiences that they have, but the student body in general, I want them to know that our athletes care deeply about New England College and they want to be contributing citizens and involved with everyone on campus. We would like to have everybody on campus support our teams at games. We’ve seen some amazing crowds, last year the Lacrosse championship was awesome. Now, you go down to the soccer field and see some great crowds there. I think athletics right now is in position to become a great event on campus for everyone to enjoy. For our student body in general, New England College athletics is expanding rapidly and we are committed to some really high expectations and standards.
One thing we are really focusing on having is an amazing Midnight Madness Celebration, and it’s not just about basketball, it’s about building an entire campus event around basketball. There will be some limited basketball there, but I want the entire campus to be highly engaged and really fill out the gym, we want it to be rocking all night with a dj and dancing. I just want people to come and have fun and experience it. When you look at a lot of bigger D1 schools, you see the student body embrace athletics. You could be at Syracuse, Clemson, or Penn State, and everyone, whether you play sports or not, is walking around with the gear and they feel so proud to be part of that school. I hope that we can create that kind of environment here, where people are like “Hey, I go to NEC and I’m really proud to be here and we have great athletics!”
