It’s a brisk summer afternoon, the type that feels ripped from Fairfield admissions brochure. A dapper man walks slowly across campus, thinking, watching, listening.
After a few moments in the cool of the shade that lies in the shadows of the Barone Campus Center, he takes a takes a brief glance at the crowd, takes a sip of water and steps to the podium.
“I want to welcome you all to Fairfield University,” he says. “And I want to tell you that you, this class … you’re a part of a new era in this school’s history, and I hope you’re as excited as I am.”
The actor in this scene was Ed Cooley, the newly ordained head coach of the men’s basketball team, who had recently been given the blessing of athletic director Gene Doris and his daunting task: revive a program that had just suffered a 9-19 season and was still reeling from the wounds of a 2003 NCAA investigation of the school’s recruiting practices under Tim O’Toole, his predecessor.
His words, at the moment, in that context, seemed nothing short of a public relations stunt, the same sort of coachspeak reserved for situations of pomp and circumstance.
Four years later, however, as the class he addressed on that summer morning prepares to enter the workforce — and Cooley prepares to enter next season as the Metro Atlantic Athletic Conference’s (MAAC) most prominent, and perhaps most successful, head coach — his words seem telling, intriguing, borderline prophetic.
In the grand scheme of athletics, it may well be that Cooley was the forerunner of a bigger change in the school’s athletic department.
Four years ago, the University athletic department, in general, was an afterthought in many of the sports that now enjoy unparalleled success and garner national attention. Four years ago, women’s basketball suffered its fifth consecutive losing season. In that same span, the Stags finished with a .500 record or worse in conference play or worse and never won a MAAC Tournament game.
Four years ago, women’s lacrosse was searching for answers after its second consecutive 4-12 season and a 2-5 conference record, a far cry from the team’s successes at the turn of the decade, highlighted in three regular-season MAAC Championships in a span of three seasons.
Four years ago, men’s lacrosse aimed to leverage a share of the GWLL championship and its first trip to the NCAA Tournament in school history into a successful entry into the ECAC, one of the sport’s preeminent conferences.
Of all the predicaments, Cooley’s task, one that he publicly embraced on that summer afternoon, might’ve been the most daunting of all.
Nineteen losses a year earlier. A roster depleted by graduating seniors and scholarship restrictions. Five one-and-done MAAC Tournament showings under O’Toole, the glory of the school’s miracle run to the conference championship in 1997 faded from memory.
Moreover, Cooley knew the task was greater than just defense and rebounding. School spirit, vibes on campus and team culture, in many ways, needed a renovation.
But that was four year’s ago.
Four years later
It is difficult to claim that Cooley’s hire was a watershed, a defining moment for the athletic program that ushered in a new era of success. After all, men’s basketball had some success under O’Toole, who led the team to a NIT berth in 2003. Men’s lacrosse became one of the most popular sports on campus, flourishing under the direction of former head coach Ted Spencer, who nurtured the program from its days as a fledgling club sport to a bonafide national presence.
Still, with the grace of hindsight, it’s clear that the school’s athletic department needed a shot of life.
That revival, in many respects, began with Cooley and the accomplishments he’s achieved since his first public appearance on campus — his exploits on the court — a pair of seven-game win streaks in his first and second seasons as coach, the program’s longest in twenty years; three wins in the MAAC Tournament in two seasons; a near overtime upset of heavily favored Siena, the two-time defending champion, on its own court in overtime this past March; and a 27-point second half comeback against George Mason, the largest comeback in NCAA postseason history.
“He’s one of the best coaches I’ve ever coached against,” said former Siena head coach Fran McCaffery in the aftermath of this season’s MAAC Tournament, a sound bite all too familiar in postgame press conferences of games around the conference.
Still, to limit Cooley’s impact to just his wins and losses on the court is a tremendous understatement, as anyone in the know can attest.
“The quality of athlete that we’re able to recruit now … a Yorel Hawkins or a Warren Edney, those are the type of athletes that just wouldn’t come to Fairfield in the past,” Athletic Director Gene Doris told a sports reporting class prior to the 2009 season, ironic given that Cooley’s done all of his winning with two of his best athletes injured (for now).
Doris’s two-fold reasoning? For one, the draw of playing at the Arena at Harbor Yard, one of the best mid-major facilities in the Northeast.
The other? Ed Cooley.
A collective change.
Cooley, though, was not just an outlier, but rather the first in a series of coaching changes made by Doris in the past four years that has not only changed the face of the athletic department, but also laid the foundation for a newfound, sustainable formula for success rooted in — you guessed it — the head coach.
The caveat in this approach, and the primary reason it serves as a fascinating subject, is that Doris’ moves were not so much rapid and resounding so much as very debatable and divisive.
Consider women’s basketball, which less than a month ago reached the MAAC Championship game for the first time in nine seasons.
In the depths of the Times-Union Center, just moments after the game, Marist head coach Brian Giorgis addressed the media and began with words directed not at his players, but at a fellow coach.
“(My assistant coach) says when she retires she’s going to write a book on all Joe Frager’s sets,” said Giorgis. “He’s got a zillion of them. I’m actually more impressed that his kids remember all of them.”
Frager, though, has done more than impress the MAAC with his his cerebral, complex offensive sets. He has won.
In addition to a 20-win season in his first as head coach, Frager already boasts a postseason tournament victory, a MAAC Championship game appearance and midseason revival for the ages.
It seems matter-of-fact to say now that Frager is the future for Fairfield, but it was quite a divisive issue to replace former head coach Dianne Nolan, who currently serves as an assistant at Yale and stepped aside in 2007 following 28 years as the program’s head coach, as long a tenure as any University employee in the school history.
The safe choice might’ve been to permit Nolan to continue to coach “her baby” until retirement.
The bold choice was to part ways and search for a replacement, which Doris found in the form a Division-II standout that won a national championship with Southern Connecticut State in 2007.
The rest is history.
Beyond Basketball
It took a second. Hard to blame him. After all, his freshman year was as bad as bad gets.
In his freshman season, men’s lacrosse, one of the hallmark programs of Fairfield Athletics with a sterling tradition under previous head coach Ted Spencer, reached a new low a 4-9 overall record and season-ending slump that concluded with nine losses in the team’s final ten games.
But after a second to reflect, he found the right words for the second win of his junior year.
“I think for the program it was one of the biggest wins we’ve had here,” defenseman Sean Bannon said in regards to the team’s win over No. 3 Notre Dame .
“And the credit has to go to our coaches,” he added.
In just two short seasons as head coach, head coach Andy Copelan has the Stags looking like a team on the brink of national prominence. In his first season, the Stags finished third in the conference, the team’s highest finish.
This year looks like more than just an encore; it seems like an exclamation.
Again, the decision to turn to Copelan, a wunderkind at only 33-years-old, was far from a no-brainer. His predecessor, much like Nolan and women’s basketball, was the face and father of the program, and was only three seasons removed from a conference championship in the GWLL.
The safe move was to retain Spencer and hope for a revival.
Doris, again, opted for the bold.
Cooley, Copelan and Frager aren’t the only ones. Jim O’Brien and the women’s soccer team has new standing as a perennial MAAC powerhouse. Mike Waldvogel and women’s lacrosse’s have newfound dominance.
John Sagnelli. Ed Paige. David Patterson.
New faces abound in nearly every sport in Fairfield Athletics. So far, seems like a good thing..
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