Marianne Reilly has started off her tenure as Manhattan College’s athletic director by making significant moves.

Reilly remained busy during the summer, hiring coaches and meeting with student-athletes and staff in preparation for the start of the academic year.

The Quadrangle sat down with Reilly for an interview. Below are some of the highlights.

The Quadrangle: It was a busy summer. Did you go into the summer expecting it to be that busy, and do you think you were prepared to handle everything?

 

Marianne Reilly: I definitely knew it was going to be a busy summer. You just never know until you’re in it. … It used to be, years ago, that athletics took a breather in the summer … you kind of look back and say, ‘What went well? What didn’t go well?’ You do that while you’re still in motion now, because you have summer school. You still have reports to do, you have year-end reviews to do, and while you’re doing that, you’re also trying to evaluate what went well, what didn’t and what you want to do forward. For me, I wasn’t really looking back too much, I was trying to look forward.

 

TQ: In some of the moves you made, before the summer, in hiring Heather Vulin for the women’s basketball team, then hiring Kerri Gallagher and Katie McConnell, it seems like hiring women has kind of been a trend. Would you say that’s the case?

 

MR: Actually no, not consciously. It’s a wonderful result of our hirers that they happen to be females, but it was never the intent to go out and get a female. We had some really good applicants for all three positions, and when you evaluate who you are and what you want to be as a program and as a department, you pick the best person for the position that has the qualities that’s going to represent what we stand for.

 

TQ: Do you think there was a highlight of the summer? Or maybe something that you struggled with and you were satisfied with that you got done? Something that stood out this summer.

 

MR: Definitely all my hires that we’ve had. To get that done so that we could launch the fall with our new employees, new staff members. To open up the doors and know that we didn’t have any of those vacancies lingering over us, that was tremendous. And the fact that we filled them with good people that I think are going to be assets to the department. That was one. Two: meeting with every single coach and administrator in the department. Do you know how long that took me? I thought it was going to take a month or so, but I couldn’t just donate a month to just that.

 

TQ: In terms of facilities and infrastructure in the school, do you think that it’s in the right place, or is that an area that you think you might want to look at?

 

MR: I think facilities at almost every mid major has challenges, and we’re no different. We make the best of what we have, but there’s always room for improvement. … We have pretty good facilities considering we still have challenges. So will I look at it? Of course that’s on my list.