Oct. 12, 2008
by Ken McMillan, Special to Lacrosse Magazine Online
POUGHKEEPSIE, N.Y. - Given the choice of sweating out an economic crisis on the trader's end or teaching lacrosse, Scott Nelson feels he has made the right choice for his career.
Nelson, the new head coach at Marist College, is back in his element following a two-year hiatus that saw him working as a stock broker. Handling half-million dollar checks was pretty neat, Nelson said, but he would rather work in the world of ankle breakers rather than bank breakers.
Nasty partisans made Nelson's life miserable in his previous lacrosse stop at Brown University, and he thought it best to remove his family from that environment after six seasons at the helm. He returned to Rochester, N.Y., where he made his reputation as coach of three-time NCAA Division III champion Nazareth College - only this time he immersed himself in the financial world.
"I always had been interested in the stock market and the business world," said Nelson, who passed his Series 7 examination, allowing him to sell any type of securities. In some respects, brokers and coaches shared similar job descriptions - you had to recruit and you had to close the deal - but Nelson said he was not used to dealing with 75-year-old women trying to turn $18,000 in the bank into $19,000.
"I found myself on Saturdays watching seven hours of lacrosse, from Little League to high school to the TV games," Nelson said. "I wanted to be back around it. I wanted to be back around kids that I could hopefully make better and improve their games."
Nelson started looking for a lacrosse job at just about the same time former Marist coach James Simpson announced he was quitting after three unsatisfying seasons of 6-9, 6-9 and 3-13. As it turns out, childhood friend Fred Opie - a former All-American defender at Syracuse - is a professor at Marist, and he spoke with Nelson about the open position.
Nelson had visited Marist five years earlier when the college hosted the Empire State Games, an Olympic-style competition held every summer. "I always thought if this place ever got a stadium, they have everything else and it will be fantastic,'' Nelson said.
Sure enough, Tenney Stadium at Leonidoff Field opened in the fall of 2007 with chair-back grandstand seating for 1,744 spectators and additional seating for up to 5,000. The synthetic surface is FieldTurf. Throw in Marist's outstanding academic reputation and the fact the Metro Atlantic Athletic Conference has agreed to raise its scholarship levels, and the job seemed perfect for Nelson, who was hired in late July.
Marist athletics director Tim Murray was impressed with Nelson's resume - which included national championships in 1992, 1996 and 1997 and runner-up finishes in 1995 and 1998 at Nazareth - but he was moved even more by the glowing reviews offered by Nelson's former players at Brown.
"He has a high level of respect and command from his players, and that's important to me," Murray said. "We had fallen off our competitiveness in the league. I was hoping to be able to get a coach that I thought would have a little higher vision... I think it's going to be a terrific marriage."
Nelson said it "wasn't a whole lot of fun at the end" of his tenure at Brown, where his last two squads went 6-6 and 2-11.
"We weren't very good, and of course when you are losing, things get magnified," Nelson said. "You are never as bad as you think you are when you are losing, and you are never as good as you think you are when you are winning.
"We had a young group there, but the last year wasn't a lot of fun, and some people were very, very mean to me and my family, so it was time to take a break. It was a very, very small group, and I would rather not get into it," Nelson said.
Nelson admits he lost confidence in his own abilities during his time at Brown, but "these [Marist] kids have kind of refreshed that confidence, because they have been working so hard and they have been so much fun to be with."
Marist co-captain Paul Santavicca said the team pulled in different directions under the leadership of Simpson, who was only two years out of college when he got his first head coaching job at Marist. Santavicca said the current players became instant believers in Nelson, who runs very crisp one-hour, 40-minute practices and employs full-field scrimmages almost daily.
"He organized us right away," Santavicca said. "He is a coach of discipline, which we needed. You look at his resume - obviously he knows how to win ... He has won championships before - so it was easy to believe in his program. All we have to do is follow his steps and hopefully we can be successful this year."
"I think they just needed someone a little bit older," Nelson said, "and maybe bring them together a bit and get them more on the straight-and-narrow on a couple things on the field as far as being more disciplined."
Nelson said he is using the fall evaluation period to observe what he has in terms of talent. He has installed very general systems with more specific plans to be implemented when spring practice resumes on Feb. 28.
In Saturday's scrimmage with Division II C.W. Post, host Marist jumped out to a 4-0 lead in the first quarter, but the Red Foxes got a little sloppy as the game went along. C.W. Post led 9-8 at the end of four quarters and 14-9 at the close of a fifth, 15-minute period.
C.W. Post was 11-3 last season, ranking as high as second in the region and top-five nationally. The Pioneers, coached by John Jez, lost only two seniors, and return five All-Americans. On Saturday, senior attack,am Greg Cerar had two goals and two assists, Jimmy Davis scored three times and Dave Loftus tallied twice. Also scoring were Marc Andreassi, Matt Dimler, Vito Minerva, Mike Messina, James Johnston, Ralph Pepe and Keith Rodriguez.
Junior attackman Ryan Sharkey posted three goals and an assist to lead Marist. Sophomore midfielder Zachary Walsh netted two goals. Also scoring were sophomore attack Corey Zindel, senior midfielders Chris Milliken and Santavicca and junior Bob Von Hoffmann. Backup goalie Sam Altiero made 10 stops.
Asked if he had the makings of a team that could contend in the MAAC, Nelson said, "At times today I thought yes, and at times I thought no. We have to get better. The seniors have some lofty goals and to achieve those we have to get better."
In the short term, Nelson says the initial goals are "to be first class, ready to go, win some games and get into the MAAC tournament." Long term, he would like to step up the recruiting, work with the college to improve the financial resources and become a perennial MAAC playoff team.
That will all come in due time, he hopes. For now, Nelson is just thrilled to be back on the field and having fun again.
