{"id":1424,"date":"2017-11-08T10:15:57","date_gmt":"2017-11-08T15:15:57","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/www.monmouth.edu\/magazine\/?p=1424"},"modified":"2018-11-28T15:36:32","modified_gmt":"2018-11-28T20:36:32","slug":"the-long-game","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.monmouth.edu\/magazine\/the-long-game\/","title":{"rendered":"The Long Game"},"content":{"rendered":"

Of course he had doubts. Not many, mind you: Kevin Callahan wouldn\u2019t have taken the job if he hadn\u2019t thought he could make it work. But starting a program from scratch, all the scraping and building and struggling that implied, with no guarantee it would pay off? Yes, there were doubts, moments when he wondered what exactly he\u2019d gotten himself into, whether he\u2019d made a mistake. It\u2019s perhaps fitting that those moments that stick in his mind now have nothing to do with anything that happened on the field.<\/p>\n

\u201cMy first year here was the first time that I wasn\u2019t actually coaching a team in probably 15 years,\u201d says Callahan. \u201cI didn\u2019t even have an office at that point. I was kind of wondering, Is this really going to happen here? Did I do the right thing?<\/em>\u201d<\/p>\n

That was 1992, a quarter century ago, when the football program at Monmouth College\u2014university designation was still three years away\u2014was more of an idea than a tangible thing, a concept that he and a handful of others were willing into reality. It\u2019s a process few coaches ever get to experience, one that no amount of game planning, practice reps, or film study can ultimately prepare them for. The challenge appealed to Callahan, of course, as did the chance to relocate from upstate New York, where he was the top assistant at Colgate, to the sun and warmth of the Jersey Shore. (It didn\u2019t hurt that his wife, Ann Marie, is a Monmouth County native.) A year later, he was on the sidelines, coaching once again. He had his players, and he had a program, bare bones as it all was at the time. He was in his element, doing the work he knew. By then, for Callahan, the doubts were long gone.<\/p>\n

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Callahan and his squad head to this year\u2019s season opener against Lafayette. Photo: Mark Brown\/B51 Photography<\/em><\/figcaption><\/figure>\n

Presumably it took a bit longer for the rest of the college football world to realize that this experiment on the Jersey Shore would succeed. Twenty-five years and more than 130 wins later, there\u2019s no denying the project has been a success. Those who know Callahan best will tell you that the first\u2014and still, only\u2014head coach in Monmouth football history simply wouldn\u2019t allow it to fail.<\/p>\n

\u201cCoach Callahan is never satisfied, never happy with being average,\u201d says former All-American linebacker Joe Sentipal \u201903. \u201cHe always wants more out of his players and more out of the program. He\u2019s always on the forefront of doing what\u2019s best for his team.\u201d<\/p>\n

Adds Don Burnaford \u201972, a longtime Callahan friend: \u201cWith Kevin, it\u2019s about structure, integrity, and\u2014most of all\u2014character.\u201d<\/p>\n

This fall, Callahan led the Hawks into their 25th season, a testament both to his consistency and to his ability to adapt to change. It\u2019s an almost unrivaled tenure on the college football landscape, and one he couldn\u2019t have managed without repeated evolutionary leaps. \u201cWe\u2019ve grown so much in his time here, moving from a little non-scholarship program to where we are now, so there have always been new challenges,\u201d says Monmouth Athletic Director Marilyn McNeil. \u201cI think in many ways this has really been more like four or five different jobs for him.\u201d<\/p>\n

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https:\/\/youtu.be\/CgvxLFzFc1Y<\/p>\n<\/div>\n

One of the longest-tenured athletic directors in the nation, McNeil has led the Hawks athletic department since 1994, a full two years after<\/em> Callahan arrived to start building the football program. By that time, the first of Callahan\u2019s jobs\u2014the daunting task of implementing a plan, of simply figuring out where to start\u2014was complete. \u201cWhen I first started,\u201d Callahan remembers, \u201cwe did not have any facilities, we did not have any equipment, we did not have any players. We also didn\u2019t have time to worry about the problems. We just had to focus on solving them.\u201d<\/p>\n

Without games to coach that first year, he spent his Saturdays in the fall of 1992 traveling the region to watch other teams play. In part, he simply wanted to be involved in the game. But he was working, too, scouting potential opponents for the Hawks\u2019 first season the following year. \u201cI knew we were going to be a team made up of 100 freshmen,\u201d he says, so he looked for teams he thought his young squad would be able to compete with physically. He also picked the brains of colleagues at a handful of other schools, places that had either recently established football, or had salvaged moribund programs. It was all steady and deliberate, a chance to learn from the success of others and, whenever possible, avoid their mistakes.<\/p>\n

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Callahan and former Hawks wide receiver Miles Austin at a ceremony to retire Austin\u2019s jersey number. Photo: Monmouth Athletics<\/em><\/figcaption><\/figure>\n

It paid off quickly: Without a scholarship player on the roster, the Hawks went 2-5 in their inaugural season, but they were competitive in every game. The program\u2019s first victory came just three games in, a dramatic fourth-quarter comeback against St. Peter\u2019s in which the Hawks overcame a 17-point deficit to win on a late field goal. \u201cThat one was special,\u201d Callahan says. His only real regret from that first season was not scheduling more games; in retrospect, he says, \u201cI probably underestimated what we could handle.\u201d<\/p>\n

A year later, the team went 7-2, the first of 11 winning seasons to come. For Callahan, countless moments stand out: the 2003 team bouncing back from a dreary \u201902 season with 10 wins and a Northeast Conference championship; the last-second Hail Mary to beat Robert Morris in \u201904 en route to a second straight NEC title; shutting out Albany on the road in \u201906 to clinch another conference crown; the 2011 road upset of Villanova. There are more such moments, of course, but you will be disappointed if you expect Callahan to dwell on any of them for long. \u201cI prefer to think about where we\u2019re going,\u201d he says, \u201cand what the next steps are going to be.\u201d<\/p>\n

It\u2019s easy to forget that this is a sport, that it\u2019s not the only thing going on in these young men\u2019s lives. He\u2019s passionate, and he cares, but he doesn\u2019t make it bigger than it is.<\/p><\/blockquote>\n

Those steps are a continuation of the progress the program has made since its inception, from those early seasons as an independent, through 17 years (and five conference titles) in the NEC, to the move to the Big South Conference in 2014. That success, the increase in scholarship numbers, the transformation of Kessler Field into a state-of-the-art stadium, all are marks of the program\u2019s ambition\u2014and all are inseparable from Callahan\u2019s refusal to ever be satisfied with \u201cgood enough.\u201d It was Callahan\u2019s vision that drew guys like Sentipal, a North Jersey native who turned down scholarship offers from other programs to play for a Monmouth squad that couldn\u2019t offer him aid when he arrived.<\/p>\n

\u201cMy parents were not happy, to say the least,\u201d says Sentipal, with a laugh.<\/p>\n

By the time he was done, wrapping up a stellar career as Monmouth\u2019s first All-American selection, Sentipal (and presumably his parents) had no doubt he\u2019d made the right choice. \u201cWhen I think of the program now, I think about all the friends I made, the learning experiences, the winning seasons we had, but ultimately it goes back to the guy who gave me the opportunity,\u201d he says. \u201cCoach Callahan just has a dedication to winning, and to turning out good people.\u201d<\/p>\n

Mike Basile felt a similar pull. Now a senior safety on pace to finish his career as Monmouth\u2019s all-time leading tackler, Basile came to West Long Branch in part because of the tangible signs of ambition\u2014a new conference, a new stadium\u2014that were part of Callahan\u2019s recruiting pitch. But there was something less tangible that clinched it, says Basile: \u201cI thought he was the guy who could make me better.\u201d<\/p>\n

Basile cites Callahan\u2019s instinctive knack for balancing discipline and encouragement with his players\u2014\u201cHe knows when it\u2019s time to yell and when it\u2019s time to have fun\u201d\u2014as one of the keys to his success. Indeed, the idea of balance in all aspects of life might go a long way in explaining why Callahan has endured. He can focus on the future\u2014on recruiting and facilities and all the rest\u2014even as he maintains strong ties to past players like Sentipal and so many others. He puts in the hours required to prepare for ever-tougher challenges on the field, yet never seems to lose perspective.<\/p>\n

\u201cWhat\u2019s always fascinated me about Kevin\u2014he\u2019s so calm,\u201d says Marilyn McNeil. \u201cIt\u2019s easy to forget that this is a sport, that it\u2019s not the only thing going on in these young men\u2019s lives. He\u2019s passionate, and he cares, but he doesn\u2019t make it bigger than it is.\u201d<\/p>\n

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\u201cHe knows when it\u2019s time to yell and when it\u2019s time to have fun,\u201d says senior safety Mike Basile about his head coach. Photo: Mark Brown\/B51 Photography<\/em><\/figcaption><\/figure>\n

This is the man McNeil remembers being impressed by from her earliest days at Monmouth, a positive, approachable leader whose tenure has made him, in her words, \u201cour dean of coaches.\u201d To this day, she says, Callahan\u2019s office door is always open, an unspoken invitation to other coaches in the department who might be looking for advice or a sounding board. \u201cHe loves to coach,\u201d says McNeil, \u201cand he loves to teach.\u201d<\/p>\n

Where balance is concerned, perhaps that is Callahan\u2019s most impressive achievement: constantly evolving, yet never losing the qualities that allowed him to succeed in the first place.<\/p>\n

Don Burnaford has known Callahan since he was an applicant for the head coaching job. As chair of the committee tasked with making a recommendation on the addition of the sport, Burnaford remembers being impressed by Callahan\u2019s resume even before they\u2019d met. \u201cIn 26 years,\u201d Burnaford says, \u201cthere\u2019s never been a hiccup that has ever made me change my feelings about him.\u201d<\/p>\n

With Kevin Callahan, it seems the only change is progress. And he has no plans to stop getting better anytime soon. \u201cI think there\u2019s still so much potential in this program, so many places we can still go,\u201d he says. \u201cI want to keep pushing us forward. There\u2019s more to come.\u201d<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

In 1992, Coach Kevin Callahan didn\u2019t have so much as a campus office, let alone a team. Now, 130-plus wins later, Callahan and hawks football are celebrating the quarter-century mark.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":11,"featured_media":1475,"comment_status":"closed","ping_status":"closed","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"image_focus":"{\"x\":77,\"y\":50}","hide_title":"","footnotes":""},"categories":[10],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-1424","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","hentry","category-features"],"thumbnail":"\"\"","catString":"Features","issue":"Fall 2017","_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.monmouth.edu\/magazine\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/1424","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.monmouth.edu\/magazine\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.monmouth.edu\/magazine\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.monmouth.edu\/magazine\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/11"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.monmouth.edu\/magazine\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=1424"}],"version-history":[{"count":28,"href":"https:\/\/www.monmouth.edu\/magazine\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/1424\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":4803,"href":"https:\/\/www.monmouth.edu\/magazine\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/1424\/revisions\/4803"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.monmouth.edu\/magazine\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/1475"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.monmouth.edu\/magazine\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=1424"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.monmouth.edu\/magazine\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=1424"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.monmouth.edu\/magazine\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=1424"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}