Scarano Q&A: 'Every Time (in Stadium) I Have to Pinch Myself'

Another successful season completed and the excitement building for an even more productive one, we sat down with director of athletics Marty Scarano with the new Wildcat Stadium in the background. He talked about embarking on a new era in UNH athletics with the football team in a new home, the accomplishments of the last year and the promise of what lies ahead.

Q. Once again, we closed out a school year watching two great track & field competitors, Elinor Purrier and Laura Rose Donegan, earn first-team All American honors in the steeplechase at the NCAA Outdoor Track & Field championships. You could make a pretty nice habit out of finishing the season in that matter, don't you think?

A. It's just great. As I said last year, it's kind of that cherry on the sundae at the end of the season and those two women ran very well and bested what they did last year. It's kind of indicative of what the whole year was about.

Q. Let's jump right into what's to come. The stadium out back is looking pretty nice. What are you most looking forward to in the stadium?

A. I think, first and foremost, it's just a fabulous endorsement of the football program that Sean McDonnell and Bill Bowes have built here over many, many years and to say that the football program deserves it is an understatement. The one thing that's been very interesting and fulfilling is every single person I've spoken to about the stadium has said it's about time. They deserve it. I think we all feel really good about that. It's a bricks and mortar endorsement of a really, really fabulous football program.

Second of all, and as important, is the fan experience. The fans have followed us. They have done a great job turning out and supporting the football program, albeit in what may be the worst stadium in the nation with no amenities, and now they're going to go to one of the best stadiums.

I've said tongue in cheek from last to first and it's going to be pretty close to that. I really do feel as though we've had one of the worst facilities I've ever seen and now with this stadium it's going to be one of the best. It's just going to be great for the fans. Everything about the stadium is about the fan. I think we've made it very affordable for all types of people, whether it's the $99 season ticket, we're going to have a children's ticket for individual games and then we have a really high end experience in the Service Credit Union Victory Club.

We're really excited about that. We're marketing it. We're very successful right now doing that and we look forward to having 12 to 13,000 people for five home games.

Q. You and others have had a vision of a new stadium for a long time. Is it about what you expected?

A. It's much better. I think I'm a person that's hard to please and we've been chasing this thing for a long time. My predecessors as athletic director have been chasing it. Every time I go in there I have to pinch myself. I really do. I've said that a lot lately and we're really close to having the public see this. When the public gets in there and sees this, they'll know what I'm talking about. The sightlines are fabulous. The concourse for example is really wide and spacious and it's an open air concourse. So when you're there and you're at the concessions stands all you need to do is turn around and the action is right there.

You go up to the upper areas, the Victory Club and communications, the sports information and media areas are really first class. The coaches box . . . Coach Mac doesn't like me saying this too much. The coaches' box is really spacious and high-tech. It's like an FBS stadium. We're really, really pleased about that.

Q. Some people have been by to visit the stadium and tours are now being offered. What kind of feedback have you heard from people who maybe haven't been here in a couple of months or perhaps haven't been here since last football season?

A. They're frankly blown away. I had a couple of the trustees through a few weeks ago. Of course, we had to go through all the process of having the trustees approve it and I met with the trustees and UNH President Mark Huddleston a number of times. They wanted pro forma. They wanted to know the financials. They did want to know the design. But when they went through, they just said, 'Oh my gosh, we had no idea it was going to be this nice.' One trustee looked at me and said, 'Marty, this is a real gem for the state of New Hampshire.'

That's what's really gratifying. We did good, as they say. We built this. We did it on budget. The other thing that's really, really neat: There was a $25 million hard cap on this stadium. As you know, a lot of these facilities start and they don't finish on budget and they have that creep on the budget. There was a hard cap of $25 million, being New Hampshire. But I think we got a facility that looks more like it's $40 million as opposed to $25 million.

Q. As we sit here looking at the huge 30-foot by 50-foot video board at the end of the stadium, a year ago at this time there were no video boards at UNH's athletic facilities. Now there's one here and there's on at the Whittemore Center. How great is that for fans and the fan experience?

A. That's what we're trying to do. Today, it isn't just about wins and losses, although that's really important. It's about the fan experience. We hired (Senior Associate Athletic Director of External Affairs) Jon Danos. He's been doing a great job. He's come in here and turned our marketing upside down. He's turned our approach to ticket sales upside down. We're going to start engaging our hockey fans in a very, very different way. It was imperative we got that video board in the Whittemore Center, which we still consider after 20 years still one of the very best facilities in college hockey. But it needed a center hung video board. We saw last year, the first year out, what an impact that made and it's just going to keep getting better as we build content and do different things. Obviously we wanted to do that in the stadium. The other thing is they are both state-of-the-art, high-def boards. Of course, we're building out all our production capabilities, which is daunting. But we're going to do this the right way and we feel really good about that.

Q. Can we take a few minutes to break down the sports individually and how you see them shaping up for the coming year?

A. I'll go backwards and say this past year was a good year. I'd classify it as a good year, not a great year. Last year was a great year, maybe one of the best years athletically that UNH has ever experienced. I think what's happened is we have staged ourselves for another great year coming up. I'm always the eternal optimist, but you try to be analytical and you look at what the teams are returning. You look at what they've done.

Men's soccer

I remember last year talking about Marc Hubbard coming in and what a fabulous coach he is. He had them in first place at the end of the season with a team that obviously he inherited. It was just unfortunate at the end of the year. He loses his last game and all the tiebreakers – I had never seen this – I think six tiebreakers went against them and they got sent to UMBC for the first round of the playoffs. UMBC has been the best program in this league for a long time. Marc has done a great job recruiting and I think that they're staged for a really special year and I see them competing for the championship.

Women's soccer

Steve Welham has a done a great job with the women's soccer team. He has built his program the last three years to this August when he has 12 freshmen coming in, all of them very highly touted. There's going to be a significant jump I think in women's soccer as well, hopefully get back to that NCAA tournament.

Cross country

What can you say about Coach B (Jim Boulanger), Coach Hop (Rob Hoppler) and Casey (Carroll). They continue to turn out great cross country and track & field athletes. I think again we're going to be competing on the women's side (UNH has won the last three America East titles) and the men are close. The men are in the top three programs.

Field hockey

Robin Balducci's teams have been a little bit off the last year or so but I know she's recruited some kids that are coming in this year to make a difference and I see field hockey being right back at it where we want them to be and where they should be.

Football

What are you going to say about Coach Mac and the football program? It's an unbelievable run. Twelve consecutive years in the FCS tournament. I'm on the FCS committee and it's amazing, as I always say, when you're in that room and people are talking about two things, the CAA and the strength of the league and UNH in particular and how we run the program. I've said this before: It's not so much the wins and losses which are important, it's the national respect we have because what coach Mac has done and what those kids have done over the course of time.

We're looking forward to a landmark football season. I don't know how many wins we're going to have. I think we're going to be pretty darn good. But it's going to be awfully exciting playing in the stadium.

Volleyball

Three consecutive America East championships. Jill Hirschinger and Stacy Barnett have done an unbelievable job. They have some losses to graduation, but they have a heckuva team returning and I think they're staged to do it again. I've said this before: We never take these things for granted because you have to play the matches and the games, but I think they've put themselves in a distinctive position in volleyball where they're the cream of the crop if you would, and everyone's looking up at us. That's a big bullseye for them as well. But they can handle it.

Swimming and Diving

I know Josh Willman and Jarrod Zwirko were upset. They haven't won the America East title in two years. They always want to be in the hunt for the title. Again, you dig into the details as to why. We weren't as deep as we've been and I know they've backfilled with more swimmers and they think they're going to score more points across that championship format. I suspect that they'll be right back at it. We have a couple of really high-end swimmers who compete for those NCAA positions. I expect really good things out of them.

Women's hockey

Hilary Witt, Stephanie Jones and Bill Bowes have worked so hard to recruit and get that program back to where it is. I think this will be the year that you'll see them really gaining traction. They started last year gaining traction and they were competitive in just about every single game coming down the stretch. They had a great series at the end in the playoffs against UConn and I think they're going to take off from where they left off. I see them really competing and hopefully get that playoff spot and get that NCAA berth at some point.

Men's hockey

It's interesting times, I guess I'd say. We have this transition going on right now with Coach Umile and Mike Souza. We're getting Mike up to speed and there's a lot of things going on behind the curtain as I like to say and they're working awfully hard recruiting. We have a couple of kids coming in, one defenseman in particular that I know they're excited about.

They're going to compete and they did compete last year and we were just a little light here and there in some games. Defense was an issue last year and I think they've strengthened their defensive corps. While we lost Andrew Poturalski, I know Tyler Kelleher is ready to put some points on the board. I think we're going to be fine. We'll be fine and we'll see where that goes.

Q. It's an interesting schedule again, a game at Madison Square Garden against Cornell and another Frozen Fenway game, this one against Northeastern, and then the Northeast Regionals in Manchester.

A. Absolutely. Madison Square Garden and Fenway Park are as good venues as there are in the world. That's a really great opportunity. We're going to try to maximize that opportunity with our fan bases and get alumni there. Paul College is particularly active in New York City so we'll rally around Paul College and get a lot of alumni to those events and have a really good experience for the kids.

Women's basketball

It's an unbelievable story on the men's side and the women's side. We'll start with the women. Maureen Magarity is just a fabulous young coach. She still is one of those people whose name is on the tips of everyone's tongue as one of the bright young up-and-coming coaches in the nation. She's been here awhile now. She's really excited about the kids returning. They have two women coming into the program. They return a lot. They were a little disrupted last year, weren't quite where we wanted to be. I think that's made them double down on their effort and their commitment and I see them back in the hunt again.

Men's basketball

On the men's side, it's really exciting. I saw the freshmen in the weight room yesterday and they're a good looking group. I told coach Herrion, if looks matter, we're going to win the championship.

I'm close to the basketball team. We've been through a lot of travails the last couple of years even though there's a lot of wins, there's a lot of things we've had to work through and they're ready to make that jump. One thing I really appreciate about Bill Herrion is he doesn't sandbag like a lot of coaches. He puts it right out there and he says the commitment of this program is to get to the NCAA tournament. He makes no bones about it. I think that's great. He's laid that challenge down to the kids. The kids have embraced it and they're working really hard.

It's championship or bust for them. I think if they have 19 or 20 wins and they don't get to that championship game, while that's a heckuva season, I think they'll think they left a little bit in the tank.

Gymnastics

Gail Goodspeed just continues to turn out great teams. Maybe if there's one program I take for granted it might be gymnastics because she just does it year after year. It's going to be a little different with Ed Datti, her associate head coach and husband retiring, and we're going to bring in Lindsey Ayotte, who's been an assistant coach here, as associate coach. That's going to be a little bit different chemistry, obviously. Gail's energized, ready to go, as usual. She has a really talented team coming back. They did very well at the end. They were all young. There are a couple of young gymnasts who I think she is very, very excited about.

Skiing

We're hosting the NCAAs, which is always great. It's the fifth time we're hosting the nationals (the most recent was 2007). That's exciting. I'd like to think it gives us a little home mountain advantage, if you would. Skiing is such a tough, arbitrary sport because you could have a great meet and someone boots out on one run and you lose a lot of points and all of a sudden you went from seventh in the nation to 10^th or 11^th in the nation. It's hard to predict skiing. Brian Blank and Cory Schwartz turn out really, really representative fabulous teams every year and then some of it's luck. Particularly when you go out West. We skied out West for the championship last year and it's very different for Eastern skiers and it's more difficult. Hopefully us hosting it, us coming back East, is going to result in a few places difference from where we were. While we were delighted with the finish last year, I know Cory and Brian both covet that eight-nine spot nationally and hopefully we're going to get that this year.

Indoor track & field

It's exciting. Some of the kids we have running for us are really high end athletes and overall the teams are strong. You rely on some of those kids to accrue a lot of points. But again it's one of those programs at UNH that's underestimated in some ways because Jim Boulanger forever has brought kids from the state or nearby that really flew under the radar and made them into really fabulous track and cross country athletes and he'll continue to do that. I think we'll continue to be right there in the race for those championships as well.

Outdoor track & field

We'll stay on a roll. Elle (Purrier) just was at the Olympic Trials (in the 3,000-meter steeplechase) and was very representative. I know she went out there with a mindset that she was just going to let it fly. She had nothing to lose. She's racing against some of the very best in the world for the first time and I think that was a learning experience. Previous to that the NCAA championships were great. I think she's staged to take another jump. I know coach Hoppler feels that way about her. She's incrementally getting better and better and better. Who knows what her potential is? It's just fabulous to watch her. She's such a great kid and a great student. The same with Rosie. Rosie is another one of those New Hampshire track athletes who kind of flew under the radar and has just blossomed into this fabulous athlete as she's come here.

The rest of the kids, again, we're diverse and we have a broad spectrum of athletes who contribute in these various meets so we'll be very competitive. And we're hosting the America East Outdoor Championships here as well. You'd love to think in this facility it's going to be another home field advantage, if you would, for us and I know the kids will be excited about competing here.

Lacrosse

We're very excited about the women's lacrosse program. Obviously it's an important program for us. It's one of our major offerings in the spring. Sarah Albrecht now has all of her classes in and she continues to bring more talented athletes to UNH and we're really looking forward to a breakout year.

Q. UNH hosted the NCAA women's Frozen Four last year. This year we've got the NCAA Division I Skiing championships at Cannon Mountain and Jackson Ski Touring in March and later that month have the NCAA Northeast Regional ice hockey tournament in Manchester. What do you expect out of those events?

A. It's very important that we do these things and it's very important we do them well. I think this puts UNH in a different place nationally as far as our reputation and what we're capable of doing. (Deputy Athletic Director) Steve Metcalf and his crew do a great job running these events, they really do. I know this again when we go back to Indianapolis, a lot of us are on committees and we're very representative at the committee level with the NCAA. We have a great reputation for doing things really well, which unfortunately isn't always the case on some campuses. I think the NCAA feels as though when they come here for a championship that they're not going to have to worry as much, it's going to be well run and they're going to have good representation. That's really important.

We talk about branding value and what that means to the University. These are high-profile athletic events that are nationally publicized and it's great to see them hosted at the University of New Hampshire. In the case of the Verizon Center down in Manchester we're really, really fortunate to have that facility down there with Tim Bechert and his staff at SMG. They just do an unbelievable job every time there's an NCAA Regional and arguably the NCAA feels that's one of the very best hockey regionals in the nation.

Q. This summer it was announced that UNH had once again done real well in the Learfield Athletic Directors Cup competition and I know that's one of your favorites. For the third year in a row UNH did better than any other America East school in the Learfield Cup, which recognizes success across a range of sports.

A. Athletic directors love the Learfield Cup. The reason we like it is that it represents a broad-based approach to your programs. It's not just about one or two sports. It's about how you support all your sports across your spectrum of offerings, particularly Title IX. I just think it's unbelievably fabulous that UNH finishes as high as we do every single year. People will say 85^th, what's 85^th? Well, there are 370 Division I schools. You could argue that 340 of them are better resourced than the University of New Hampshire. For us to finish 85^th, you'd have to look at those comparative groups. We finished first among America East. We finished second among Hockey East. Finished third among the CAA. But most of all out of the top 10 FCS programs – we categorize ourselves as FCS given our football offering – we're the only public institution in the top 10. The only other schools ahead of us were Ivy League schools, which are very, very well resourced and have sometimes 35 and 40 programs that represent themselves across the spectrum.

Q. Then there was winning the America East Academic Cup for the second consecutive year.

A. One thing (UNH President) Mark Huddleston reminds me, he says, 'Marty, sometimes when you talk so passionately about athletics, you don't talk enough about academics.' I would say the reason for that is, it's because that's what we do. I don't feel as though we have to talk about it. That's a great source of pride. That's a part of our culture. We expect a lot of our kids academically. We expect to graduate 100 percent of them. We have a 91 percent graduation rate. We always want to be over 90 percent so we're really happy about that. The Academic Cup in America East is a significant accomplishment given the schools that are in America East and how good they academically. We're awfully proud of that. To think that our 520 student athletes had a cumulative average of 3.23 is pretty amazing. All credit to them. All credit to our coaches and our academic support staff who force that culture down on the student athletes. We recruit the right kind of student athletes and they in turn do the work that's necessary.

Allen Lessels
@UNHInsider
Allen.Lessels@unh.edu

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