In search of the cream of the coaching crop

Yale's prestige and its athletic director's commitment to winning attract new coaches.

By Kate Moran

Tom Beckett is a busy man these days. Within a span of six days in early March, men's basketball coach Dick Kuchen and women's basketball coach Cecelia DeMarco both resigned, and Beckett, the director of athletics, had to begin the process of searching for their replacements.

Both basketball teams struggled this year under Kuchen and DeMarco--the men went 4-22, and the women slumped into a 10-game losing streak in the middle of the season--and Beckett and his colleagues must find coaches who can rebuild the floundering programs. The hunt for new coaches, however, is more complex than simply finding proven winners. Yale is not looking for win-at-all-cost coaches such as Fresno State's Jerry Tarkanian or Clem Haskins, who sacrifice their progams' integrity for victories, but for people who will not compromise academics while building a successful team. The department must believe the coach is a perfect fit for Yale's needs; at the same time, the coach must consider Yale a perfect fit for his needs. Such a delicate balance can be difficult to strike.

Finding the perfect fit

In 1986, when she was only 25 years old and a recent graduate of Rutgers University, Peg Scofield read that Yale was looking for a women's volleyball coach. "I just threw in my application, got an interview, and was hired almost on the spot," she said. Scofield, who at the time was only one year older than one of her players, had no previous coaching experience before she came to Yale, and she admits that she "was lost as to handling the department and the paperwork and the administration."

Today, 13 years later, coaches are not hired in such a cursory manner. Rather, like the prince who carried the glass slipper across his kingdom, searching for the foot with a perfect fit, the athletic department seeks out six or seven coaching candidates, and subjects each to a rigorous series of interviews to determine who is the perfect fit for Yale's mix of academics and athletics.

The University tries to locate the perfect fit, a blue and white "Cinderella," by contacting a broad range of prospective coaches from around the country. It advertises the available position in coaching organizations, trade papers, (including the NCAA News), and various national athletic organizations. The department also mobilizes Yale's vast and influential network of alumni to help search for a new coach. Football coach Jack Siedlecki, for example, was approached by a newspaper writer who was the friend of an alumnus. Yale coaches also network with colleagues, often at summer camps or clinics, to publicize openings in the athletic department. "I was working at a clinic in Pittsburgh," baseball coach John Stuper said, "and [former softball coach] Kathy Arendsen was there. She told me that the job was available, and I was interested because Tom Beckett and I both used to coach at Butler."

Each of the prospective coaches interviews one-on-one with Beckett and then participates in a roundtable-style interview with other athletic administrators, faculty members (including a professor and a college dean), several coaches, and often student-athletes or alumni. Many coaches feel that the roundtable interview is akin to stepping before a firing squad. "I walked into a board room," women's lacrosse coach Amanda O'Leary said, "where members of the search committee were seated around a big table. I sat in the middle, and they shot questions at me." Stuper added, "Before the group interview, some athletes I had lunch with told me, `Don't let them intimidate you.'"

During the roundtable, members of the committee ask a coach about his or her experience at other universities or with professional teams. Stuper and women's squash coach Mark Talbott, for example, stood out among other candidates, since the former pitched in the major leagues and the latter is a three-time Olympic Athlete of the Year. In adition to standard interview questions, the search committee presents the coach with situational questions, such as how he or she would discipline a player who broke team rules. The committee is especially interested in a coach's feelings about the proper balance between athletics and academics. "They were concerned that I was coming from Maryland," O'Leary said, "because of the academic constraints that come with an Ivy League university."

Assistant Director of Athletics Colleen Lim believes that an understanding of Yale's academic rigor is a necessity for every coach. "Our goal is to win the Ivy League title and to provide quality educational opportunities for student-athletes," she said. "We strive for excellence in both athletic and academic arenas, and we are looking for coaches who agree wholeheartedly with this philosophy. They must understand that Yale competes at the Division I level without scholarships, but within this context we want to be successful. The best candidate is the one that can articulate a plan to achieve the University's goal."

Siedlecki seemed to embody the athletic department's objectives when he was hired in 1996. In addition to coaching championship teams, Siedlecki had worked at Amherst, where academic demands rival those at Yale, and at Worcester Polytechnic, an engineering school. "They could have hired someone out of the NFL," he said, "but that coach wouldn't have experience recruiting or working with the type of kid Yale looks for."

Why coach at Yale?

If, among other qualities, an understanding of Yale's academic demands makes a coach attractive to the athletic department, what qualities make Yale attractive to prospective coaches? After all, Ivy League universities do not offer athletic scholarships, thus limiting a coach's ability to build a nationally-ranked team.

Some coaches, however, said that the non-scholarship environment attracted them to the Ivy League. "At Yale, student-athletes play because they want to play," field hockey coach Marisa Didio said. "Passion--not scholarships--attaches them to their sport." O'Leary has also found that a lack of athletic scholarships has not discouraged her players from working hard. "I demand the same work ethic here that I demanded at Maryland," she said. "Yale kids give the same amount, even though they have other pressures."

Several coaches also said they came to Yale because of the University's prestige. "Professionally, there's a philosophical fit for everyone," explained men's soccer coach Brian Tompkins, a native of England. "The Ivy League was a place where I wanted to be, because it mirrors the English college system. There's true academic integrity here. You're more likely to encounter true student-athletes, as opposed to athlete-students."

One might expect that athletic programs do not receive enough support from both fans and the Administration at a university with such strong academics. Informal meetings with coaches and athletes during the interview process, however, persuaded several coaches that both players and coaches were satisfied with the athletic atmosphere at Yale. "They're in the trenches," Didio said. "I talked to coaches with all different levels of experience, including those who were just hired. Our conversation gave me the ability to see perspectives that had transpired since [Beckett's] arrival."

The Administration also made sure that coaches were aware that although Yale is certainly not Michigan or Penn State, athletics are important to the University. "The Administration has to believe in what you're doing," Siedlecki said. "My biggest concerns when I was interviewing were, one, did the Administration want to win, and two, I had to look at the whole situation. Was there the wherewithal to recruit, was there adequate financial aid? President Levin and Tom Beckett convinced me that they want to win. I'm a football coach, and I want people to care about our program. At Yale, people care about our success."

Graphic by Sara Edward-Corbett.

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