It is always difficult to replace someone who means so much to a team and a school like Dianne Nolan did to Fairfield. But Nolan has made her decision to move on and has left Fairfield Athletic Director Gene Doris with the difficult task of finding a replacement for an icon.
Luckily for Doris, he has recent experience with choosing a new basketball coach, as just one year ago he had to replace Tim O’Toole, former head coach of men’s basketball.
While O’Toole was well-liked and well-known around campus, he was not at all the figure Nolan was. She was the longest tenured employee in University history and was a face almost everyone recognized around campus.
The tough question that Doris must answer now is, ‘What type of person should be the new head coach?’
Whoever the new coach turns out to be will not have to build a program as Nolan turns over her “baby” in good condition.
The Stags are on the rise in the MAAC, returning one of the top players in the conference, Sabra Wrice ’08, as well as Wrice’s very talented high school teammate Baendu Lowenthal ’09. Also returning is one of the league’s best freshmen, Stephanie Geehan.
The new coach must be someone who can get people to come to the games. He or she must find a way to attract fans to a sport that is often hard to draw people to. With a solid regular season this past winter, the team has the talent to compete but needs a few more parts to complete the puzzle.
Doris has to find someone who knows how to recruit, someone who can bring in the players the Stags need.
While it’s important to have someone who can recruit locally, it’s even more important to be able to stretch out, like men’s basketball Head Coach Ed Cooley has done with his first two classes, reaching into the South to grab talented players.
Nolan was an excellent recruiter in the Northeast region, grabbing two very talented players from her home state of New Jersey in Wrice and Lowenthal in the past few seasons. But no player on the team comes from outside New York, Massachusetts, New Jersey or Pennsylvania.
Recruiting is vital to the success of a team. If a coach can’t recruit, the team won’t win. All it takes is one top recruit to turn a team around, especially in a league like the MAAC, where any team can win with one or two stars.
It will be difficult for Doris to find someone who can be as big a figure around campus as Nolan was. She was always visible, smiling and greeting students. She was a mentor in the Ignatian Residential College, the only person from the athletic department to be one.
Doris should look for an energetic assistant who is willing to come in and do anything to win, much like Cooley was last year.
Basically, Doris must find someone who can come in and “Cooley-fy” the women’s basketball program. Cooley has brought excitement back to Fairfield men’s basketball, bringing hundreds of students to the MAAC tournament.
While it would be great to bring in a coach with a well-known name, such as Hartford’s Jen Rizzotti, that is not going to happen.
A name that hasn’t been brought up but would be perfect for the school is Rutgers’s Associate Head Coach Jolette Law. Law is known for her energy, her amazing recruiting ability and her coaching skills.
Law is one of the top assistant coaches in the country, and it would be difficult to pry her away from one of the nation’s top programs. Rutgers is in the Final Four this season, but she is still someone Doris should try to secure.
Last year Doris picked the perfect person for the job in Cooley; Law would be just as great of a selection.
Doris has said he is waiting until the teams in the Final Four finish play, as Fairfield is looking at coaches from those four teams. Hopefully, he is taking a close look at Law.
Besides coaching, Law has played with the Harlem Globetrotters and was the only female to be in M.C. Hammer’s video, “Too Legit 2 Quit.”
Whomever the coach may be, he or she needs to have the personality to be able to bring fans into games, which is always a difficult task for women’s basketball.
No matter who that person is, he or she has to be willing to work hard to bring the excitement.
Law would be exactly what Fairfield needs, someone who, like Cooley, will pump their fists to the fans to get them involved, will make his or her face known around campus like Nolan did, and most important, will do anything to win.
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