From the time he graduated from Ohio State in 2004, Anthony Gilardi worked toward becoming a Division I head men’s lacrosse coach. So to achieve that dream in June was, in a way, an anticipated byproduct of his professional work.
Where it came? The Long Island native probably wouldn’t have guessed he would eventually head back home to take over at Stony Brook.
Not in the slightest, actually.
“I felt like when I left, I left,” Gilardi said. “I’m not going to lie. It’s just one of those things. That’s part of the journey that you can’t control. You never know where you’re going to end up.”
It was actually a running joke throughout Gilardi’s time as an assistant at Towson. Tigers Shawn Nadelen observed that both Gilardi and former Towson assistant Dan Cocchi — now an assistant at Rutgers — both subscribed to the idea there were two types of Long Islanders: Those who stayed forever, and those who left and never came back.
If it makes Gilardi a bit of an outlier, so be it. But it’s also understandable why the Seawolves would have a fair bit of appeal for a first-time head coach.
“He was always a Long Island guy,” Nadelen said. “It’s what I always say from being from upstate New York. You can take the boy out of the country, but you can’t take the country out of the boy. I think that’s very true for Anthony. He was a Long Island guy at heart and he still has that in him and he can’t be more excited and I know he’s going to do a tremendous job there.”
In Stony Brook, Gilardi has found a program on firm footing. The Seawolves went 9-6 last season and played host to the America East tournament, only to stumble 14-8 against UMBC in the semifinals.
Blessed with exceptional access to talent, Stony Brook has never missed the America East tournament since joining the league in 2002. The Seawolves have earned three NCAA tournament berths, reaching the quarterfinals in 2010. Nonetheless, there is a hunger for a program now seven years removed from its last NCAA appearance to accomplish even more.
“I haven’t been shy about saying our goal is to build a top-10 program,” Gilardi said. “I’m in it for the long haul. It starts how we treat and coach our players, and how you recruit the right people. There are unbelievable facilities, unbelievable university academics and there’s been success with the women’s program, with the football team, with the basketball teams. The blueprint is there. It’s not like saying ‘We can’t do it at this place.’ Stony Brook wants to be good athletically.”
The blueprint could very well look like the one at Towson, which shares some traits with Stony Brook. Both are public universities in talent-rich areas. The Tigers weren’t an annual NCAA tournament contender when Nadelen took over in 2012, and have now reached the postseason in five of the last seven years.
Much of it stemmed from a discipline that mirrored Nadelen’s personality. But the Tigers also carved out a consistent on-field identity that helped spur a trip to the NCAA semifinals in 2017.
Expect something similar when the Seawolves meet for the first day of fall practice. Gilardi has little interest in dwelling on the past, simply because the demands on his players won’t be the same.
“We’re going to ask them to do different things than they were doing, so it’s tough to evaluate them based on what they were doing before,” Gilardi said. “They key for us is to attack it on Day One in the fall. It’s about how they handle what we’re asking of them to do culturally, living the right way, working the right way. As a coach, what you want to do is make sure you’re treating these guys the right way.”
Even if the Seawolves’ approach will change, he inherits a relatively experienced team. Stony Brook graduated just 18.67 percent of its games started from a season ago, the 18th fewest in Division I. Seniors accounted for a mere 8.3 percent of the team’s points in the spring, less than only 10 other D-I teams.
The Seawolves bring back their top two scorers in seniors Tom Haun (34 goals, 12 assists) and Chris Pickel Jr. (23 goals), and they should benefit from the tutelage of a coach who oversaw a methodical offense in the Baltimore suburbs that found a way to plug-and-play despite graduation losses more often than not.
“You can see some of his finer products with Ryan Drenner and Brendan Sunday and other guys who aren’t the MLL/PLL type of players but went from scout team players to first line midfielders or starting attackmen over the course of four years,” Nadelen said. “That’s obviously a credit to the young men and their work ethic, but also a credit to Anthony and how he continued to build them up.”
Throughout his time as an assistant — at Denison, Ohio State, Navy and then Towson — Gilardi kept notes on how to get ready to run his own program. He picked the minds of fellow coaches. He kept an eye on other sports, doing things like catching a glance at how football coaches presented their programs at SEC and Big Ten media days.
And since his hire at Stony Brook, he’s talked to players, alums and support staff to better understand every aspect of the program to come up with a judicious plan rather than rush into decisions.
“You only get one chance to be a first-time head coach,” Gilardi said. “I want to put myself in position to be successful.”
And successful, no less, in a geographic area he never expected his career to take him.
“Stony Brook is going to be a mainstay in the conversation,” Nadelen said. “He’s got the ability and I know he has the energy and excitement and he’s going to build that program up. There’s no doubt. He denied it for a long time, but it was an opportunity that made perfect sense and it’s a great fit.