Reilly comes home to Manhattan College

Marianne Reilly has been part of a lot of firsts in Manhattan College sports history.

She was part of the first women’s Division I basketball program at the school in the late 1970s. She was the first 1,000-point scorer in school history and she was also the first woman to be inducted into Manhattan’s Athletic Hall of Fame when she received that honor in 1992.

Now she can add another first to her Manhattan storied career — the first woman athletic director in the school’s long history.

Reilly, who graduated from Manhattan in 1982, was named to her new position late last week at a press conference held on the floor of Draddy Gymnasium. It was a unique event in that members of both Manhattan and Fordham University — Reilly’s home for the past 30 years — were on hand to both welcome and bid farewell at the same time.

Promising to promote the Jaspers athletic programs with “integrity and class, no exceptions,” Reilly officially took the reins of an athletic director’s office that has seen its’ share of tumult in the past year as former AD Noah LeFevre departed the position in January after less than two years on the job. LeFevre was replaced on an interim basis by Tom O’Connor, who now steps aside as the Marianne Reilly era is ushered in.

“I’m thrilled to be home again,” said Reilly, who spent the last three decades at rival Fordham where she held the title of Associate Athletic Director, a position she held since 1996, as well as Senior Women’s Administrator. Part of her responsibilities included playing a role in hiring men’s and women’s basketball coaches as well as football and softball head coaches.     

Now she gets to call the shots at her alma mater.

“I am thrilled at the opportunity but I also understand the responsibility that comes with this opportunity,” Reilly said. “It’s exciting. You’re a little stunned at first because when you’ve been at a place for 30 years it’s hard.  A lot of things come flooding through your mind. It took me a good 24 hours to get myself together and then I was like, ‘All right. We know how we’re going ahead now.’”

‘Full circle’

Reilly even used props to illustrate her long history with Manhattan College as she pulled out her old No. 22 uniform as well as an ancient travel bag from her playing days, saying she didn’t know how they fit anything in the tiny bag while quipping that the uniform had somehow shrunk while hanging in her closet for the past three decades and change.

But dressed in a green jacket and skirt and beaming while addressing the gathering of friends, alumni, current student-athletes and media, Reilly clearly looked happy to be back on the Riverdale campus after all these years. 

“This is where I literally started. This is great, I’ve come full circle,” Reilly said.

She plans on meeting with the various coaching staffs of the school’s 19 varsity sports in the coming days and plans on hitting the ground running. One of her first major moves as athletic director will be to hire a new head coach for the women’s basketball program after former coach John Olenowski didn’t have his contract renewed following this past season.

“That definitely,” Reilly said about filling the coaching position. “But I also want to meet with the staff, find out a little more about them, find out what they love about here and find out what could be improved here. We’re never going to do this alone. We have to do this as a team. So certainly those are some of the things that I want to talk about. But I have a great staff. They’ve been covering this for a while now so they got this under control. I’m really blessed to walk into this experience here.”

Happy coach

Manhattan men’s basketball coach Steve Masiello, who just signed a four-year extension with the school, thinks Manhattan hit a home run with the hiring of Reilly.

“I haven’t been this happy since we won our second title [in March 2015],” Masiello said. “I’m really excited about the passion she’s going to bring, her vision and competitive spirit yet still keeping a model integrity and class in place. I think she is going to be a great connection to the Jasper alumni and to the students and I think student welfare is going to be a top priority. So all the things we believe in in this department and at this college, I think she’s going to be a great representative of.”

Rich Williams, a junior on the men’s basketball team, was one of several players to make their way up to the podium for a little meet and greet with Reilly following her speech. He was one of several members of the men’s team to tweet their congratulations to Reilly on landing her new position.    

“We’re all very excited to have Marianne here,” Masiello said. “We want to have a great brand and stand for all the right things. I think that’s important and that all starts at the top so I think our guys are as excited as anyone here because we know with great leadership what this place is capable of.”

Masiello also thinks having a former player now being in charge of the Manhattan athletic program is a win for the school and a hiring everyone on the Riverdale campus will be behind.

“I think because she’s an alumni you automatically want to see her do well because she’s one of ours,” Masiello said. “Anytime you have that situation you want to see them do well and they also want to do well. They want to make everyone proud. It just makes that connection that much more special at a time that I think we really need it.”

A little bit of history was made at Manhattan last week with Reilly’s hiring. But as she prepares to settle into her new position, Reilly said it’s nice to be a part of Manhattan history, but the important thing to her is doing the job the right way.

“It’s an honor and it’s nice to have that,” Reilly said of being the first woman AD in the school’s 163-year history. “But a qualified AD has to do their job whether they’re male or female.”