NORTH ANDOVER, Mass. -- Safe to say Joe Foley's first year with the Merrimack College Warriors has been a success.
The Merrimack athletic director, who officially took over the role last May, has helped student-athletes and their respective programs accomplish quite a bit since taking over.
During a sit down interview at Lawler Arena, which initially appeared on the "Jacked Up Podcast," Foley reflected on his first year at the helm of the department, chatted about all the success Merrimack has had, and discussed what he's hoping to accomplish in the future. We've highlighted 10 questions and answers from the interview.
(Editor's note: Some questions and answers have been trimmed for brevity.)
Question: Does this time of year ever slow down in college athletics?
Foley: "They never slow down. It might be different things that we're working on at different times of the year, but as soon as basketball and hockey end, we're already starting to think about basketball and hockey for next year. We're happy that our teams won a championship. We celebrate that for about 24 hours, and we go right to work getting ready for the next season.
We're settling into football now. We're planning out what basketball and hockey are going to look like for next year, and we're trying to make sure our spring sports continue to do well.
And fundraising is never ending. It doesn't matter what time of year it is. We're getting out, meeting with people, and trying to raise the money we need to support our students."
Question: What did each of your experiences in college athletics teach you, and what did you want to bring with you to Merrimack?
Foley: "I learned a lot from each of those steps along the way. I had the good fortune of always being surrounded by great people, and that's step one. I've worked for really talented, impressive people. I've learned how important that holistic commitment to excellence is. Everything we do is worth doing our best and doing really, really well at a high level.
We can be as good as anybody else out there. We want to pursue excellence. We want to be competing for conference championships and NCAA tournaments, and ultimately for national championships. We want to do our best in the classroom. We want our kids to be outstanding students and great community citizens. We want to be the best at everything we do.
I had the good fortune of being at places that won national championships at each of those stops, and I know what championship culture looks like. That's what we're trying to create here."
Question: What made Merrimack the right opportunity for you, and what is your vision for the future of the department?
Foley: "I learned a lot about Merrimack during the interview process. I didn't know as much as you might have thought I would have, but I learned a lot. I saw the trajectory that this school was on. I admired and continue to admire President Hopey's leadership and how he's helped grow the college.
I saw where athletics was, where it's come from, where it is today and what it could be, and I see nothing but potential. I think we're barely scratching the surface of how great we really can be here. I know that infusing resources into a program like Merrimack Athletics will help it achieve that. A lot of my background has been in that revenue-generating, fundraising space. I knew this was a place that could be unbelievable if we did some things to help infuse the resources it needs, and I thought my skills might align well with what would help it get there.
I'm excited for where we are right now, but for where we're going. I see Merrimack College as a rocket ship that's been taking off for a while, and I see athletics now having the chance to really do that too."
Question: How would you describe the culture of Merrimack Athletics?
Foley: "It's championship culture. To me, that means believing that we deserve to be and can be as great as we want to be. It means believing deep down in our hearts that we are here to do great things and we can do great things.
It won't be easy. We're going to work really, really hard. Merrimack people are gritty. We work our butts off for what we get. Nothing's given to us. We earn it. We work hard. We aspire to be great. We're great to each other. We're a culture that cares about the community that we're a part of. That's inherent in our Augustinian values.
And we're audacious. We work hard but we have fun. I often joke that our culture is a little bit like the mullet: business in the front, party in the back. We want to take care of the business at hand, but we want to have fun while we're doing it too. We're here to give young people a chance to get a great education and play sports at a high level. That should be and can be a lot of fun."
Question: New England is a major sports region, but it doesn't have one dominant college sports brand. How much potential do you think Merrimack has in that space?
Foley: "We don't want to be like anybody else. At the end of the day, we want to be the very best Merrimack we can be. And we believe that if we do that and do that well, we will be the preeminent sports program in New England and in the Northeast. UConn has done a nice job down in Storrs with a number of their programs. But outside of that, it's really ours for the taking. And we should be going after that. We should be creating a championship culture that competes in the postseason in most of our sports, if not all of our sports. We want to be competing for championships.
We saw at the TD Garden the passion that people have for Merrimack. When we're doing well, they come out of the woodwork. BC was there, UConn was there, UMass was there — two big state schools and BC with all the history they've had. And here we are, Merrimack, we had more fans than any one of them. That's the potential this has. If we're as great as we know we can be, it's going to bring this whole community together.
Continued support from the community will help us get there."
Question: College sports have changed so much with the transfer portal, NIL and revenue sharing. How can Merrimack compete in this new landscape? What's special about Merrimack?
Foley: "Hands down, it's our people. People at Merrimack are distinctly proud. They care a lot about this place, and they care a lot about each other. The community that the Augustinian values enforce, the community that we have here, is something special and unique. I think our people are what separate us. Merrimack people care about one another. They're supportive. I've picked up on that pretty quickly since I've been here.
When our teams are doing great, they pack Lawler Arena. They pack the TD Garden. Our people come out and they get behind our teams. I think what our secret weapon is, is the people and how much they care about this place.
The transfer portal is a real part of college athletics. But the reality is, if you treat your kids well, you can become winners in the transfer portal. That's what Merrimack does. It treats kids really, really well. Kids want to come here. We're having great atmospheres in our arenas. We are in the revenue-sharing space. We are able to pay kids, maybe not as much as the high, high, high-end programs, but people are able to get a scholarship and make a little extra money by being an athlete here.
Campus life in general is good. Students who come here have fun. They enjoy being here. They get a great education. In a day and age where students can transfer freely each year, you want to be the kind of school that kids like going to. Merrimack's got that cool factor, where kids want to go to school, where people want to go to school. That's a positive for us with the transfer portal environment."
Question: The game day atmosphere at Merrimack has undeniably improved since your arrival. What did you see in the game day experience when you arrived, and how have you improved it?
Foley: "With game day, I saw a few things. I saw a community of people that were willing to support Merrimack and interested in supporting Merrimack. On the other hand, I saw student-athletes that were incredibly deserving of support. I just felt like there had to be a way to bring it all together.
It started with investments and enhancements to our strategic communications. Are we getting our story told? Are we getting out there social media wise? We've invested in that. I think we're doing a much better job of being present in a fashion that people want to consume us, which today is largely social media. We're telling our story.
We also had the good fortune of working with some donors who were able to step up and provide the resources so we could have cool giveaways like TVs and X-boxes, and things that students want, as well as help fund things like halftime performances from Red Panda, Christian and Scooby, and the Air Elite Dunkers. Those things all cost money.
We knew we had a community that was interested in getting more engaged. We reached out and got to know people and asked people to come support our students. And, of course, we had students who were deserving of it. We had championship-caliber basketball and hockey teams.
Fortunately, we had really talented staff who worked their butts off to be able to bring all that together and make it happen. At the end, I think what we created was an experience people really enjoyed and wanted to keep coming back for. It started with us asking people to come check this out. As the season went on, it turned into them being excited about it. Then it's not just us promoting it on social media, but they're promoting it among themselves on social media. It started spreading, and people started really getting into it. That really matters.
We didn't lose a game at home this year in basketball, for example. We won a conference championship. We're going to get to hang a couple of banners in here next year as a result of that. I can tell you right now, we don't win some of those games without that kind of crowd here providing the support our kids need. The Siena game that we won in overtime, I believe in the bottom of my heart that our fans scored us a few baskets in that game. That helped win that for us.
It was awesome. It was a lot of fun. Like I said, we're really scratching the surface. We're just getting started. Next year is going to be even more fun."
Question: You recently made two high-profile hires with women's ice hockey coach Courtney Kennedy and women's basketball coach Missy Traversi. What do those hires say about the direction of Merrimack's women's programs, and how much do the women's programs mean to you?
Foley: "We have 28 sports, men and women, and they're all important to me. I want all of them to be excellent. I happen to have two sisters who were college athletes as well, and I don't think women's sports should ever play second fiddle to men's sports.
I really believe that we're providing this experience to help develop young people to be future leaders and help them find the best versions of themselves. We need to do that to the very best of our ability for as many students as we can.
I believe our women's teams should be great, and we're investing heavily in them. We didn't get pretty good coaches. We got amazing coaches. Courtney and Missy are both unbelievable leaders. They're recruiting really, really well. They know their games. They know how to develop students. They know how to develop athletes. And they know how to win at a high level.
I'm excited about those two programs in particular because I know they're both going to do really, really great things. Historically, women's hockey here, we haven't won at a very high level. And winning matters. We're preparing students to thrive in a competitive world, and we need to do that in a way that allows them to thrive in competitive athletics so that when they go out in the world – whether that's being spouses, parents, people, leaders in their business, community leaders in their lives – they've tasted success before and they know what it means to win, and that's important.
We've got Courtney (Kennedy), who's going to come in and jolt some energy into that program, and it's going to take off. Women's basketball has been climbing under Kelly's (Morrone) leadership, and I'm grateful to her for everything she did. I think it's well-poised now for Missy to take it to the next level as well.
Missy has an unbelievable background. Everywhere she's been, she's been a winner. I know that program is going to take off as well. She's recruiting some incredibly talented kids right now from all over the world. Literally from all over the world. We want them to be elite. We don't just want to participate. We want to win in all those sports. Because we think it's important."
Question: The men's hockey team won its first-ever Hockey East Championship and men's basketball reached the MAAC Championship, one game shy of March Madness. What stood out to you about the success of those two programs?
Foley: "I'm just so proud of Scott and the guys on the team for doing that. It's an incredible accomplishment, and I don't know if they know the impact that's had on this community at large. I've heard from so many alumni who've talked to me about how they've reconnected with friends from college just because this moment inspired them to reach out to an old friend that they hadn't talked to in a long time. It's bringing the community together again, and that's important.
Scott's done an incredible job. I'm so proud of him. His leadership is where this starts and ends. Being able to provide him with the resources and the ability to do what he does well has really played a role in helping him be successful. He recruits high-talent kids. He develops them. He's got a good game plan every game. He does a great job knowing that culture matters. Championship culture matters. He's got that in his program, no question about it.
Joe Gallo is a great coach. He's got an ability to evaluate talent like nobody else. The recruits that he brings in that turn into all-conference players, it seems to be like an annual thing. But people should remember that it's really hard to do. But he does it at an exceptional level, and he develops them. He's also got a system that people do not like preparing for, which is exactly what we need in this league to be competitive.
Joe is a unicorn. He's got something unique and special that's really hard to emulate and repeat. That's what separates him and his ability to do this job at a high level. The nature of college basketball right now is such that teams are turning over. I think I heard somebody tell me that more than 50% of college basketball players have entered the transfer portal this year, so rosters are just turning over rapidly.
So Joe has to do this each and every year, but he happens to be really good at finding good kids. He happens to be really good at recruiting. He builds great relationships with these young men who are really good players, and he stays in touch with them long after. It's more than just what they do on the court for him. He builds genuine, sincere relationships. People want to play for him. And that perpetuates itself. And the next generation of kids hear how good he was to a Budd Clark or to a Kevair Kennedy, and then they want to come back and be the next name on that list. He does an incredible job.
We need to keep giving him the resources we can. We need to keep showing him the love. I think this whole community has demonstrated they love Joe Gallo in lots of ways, probably most specifically by wearing T-shirts that say, "I love Joe Gallo" in the student section. He deserves it for everything he's done for Merrimack during his 10 years coaching here, and we hope he'll be here for many more."
Question: How do you feel about where the football program is headed?
Foley: "I'm really proud of Coach Gennetti and everything he's doing with the program. We've invested heavily in that over the past year as well. We've put resources into the salary pool. We've hired two extra assistant coaches to help them recruit top-talent players. We put a new locker room in for them. We're going to be doing some enhancements to the stadium in the years to come. We're going to build that out and create more of a home-field advantage for football, just like we've been able to do for basketball and we've seen for hockey.
I love everything he is doing. I think he's a great leader of young men. I think he does a terrific job. He holds his guys accountable. He gets good players in here. The challenge he has is not being in a conference. It's always going to be a priority until we find ourselves a conference to join. It's not for lack of effort. We're talking to all the right leagues, and we want to get into a conference. But it's really hard to advance in the postseason or even make the postseason in FCS football without being in a league. It's hard to schedule without being in a league. We aspire to be in one, and we hope to be in one in the near future.
Until then, we're going to embrace being an independent member of FCS football. That creates a challenge for him that he's done a nice job working through thus far. You mentioned some big games. We're playing at Wake Forest next year, an ACC opponent. We're playing at Delaware, who is also an FBS opponent and a really good one. Then we're playing down at Tarleton State in Texas. Tarleton State advanced deep in the FCS postseason last year. Interestingly, they're a school that went Division I the same year we did. They've got a huge influx of resources down there in Texas. It'll be neat for us to go down and see another school that started around the same time as us, how they're able to do it, and how we're able to see where we stack up. Perhaps we'll learn something from what they're doing, and maybe get out there and get a win out of it."
