By MACK ROSENBERG
CONTRIBUTING WRITER
Think back to the fall of 2010. The Fordham football team was gearing up for what would be a two-year stretch when the Rams went 6-16 under head coach Tom Masella, which included a 10-loss season in 2011. He was fired after that year.
“During the 1-10 season, Fordham lacked direction,” said Kyle Kesses, FCRH ’12, and the football voice of the Rams on WFUV at the time.
Simply put, the team was at a bit of a crossroads. There were many obstacles to overcome.
“They were transitioning to awarding scholarships, began the season with a true freshman at quarterback, dealt with several debilitating injuries and played two FBS programs. The foundation for success was not there,” Kesses added.
Women’s basketball, under the direction of Cathy Andruzzi, would endure its 16th straight losing season. Her contract was not renewed after the 2010-2011 season.
Needless to say, Rose Hill wasn’t very rosy. Rebuilding was certainly in the works. It came in the form of two brand new coaching staffs.
On April 1, 2011, Fordham named Stephanie Gaitley the new head coach of the women’s basketball team. Gaitley was a huge “get” for the women’s basketball team. She had 464 wins to her credit, and was the second-winningest head coach in the Atlantic 10 from her time spent at St. Joe’s in the early ‘90s. She led the Hawks to five NCAA tournament appearances. If anyone knew anything about how to rebuild a program, it was the 25-year head coaching veteran.
Gaitley says the Fordham job always intrigued her.
“I was enticed [by the recent struggles of the program],” Gaitley said. “I love the role of the underdog, and I’m not going to put myself in any situation unless I feel I can be successful.”
Eight months later, Joe Moorhead was named the new head coach of the football team. Moorhead, who was the starting quarterback for Fordham in the mid ‘90s, took the job after 14 years as an offensive coach at the collegiate level.
“The potential that we all thought this place had and the things we felt we could achieve made [the Fordham job] a very attractive position,” Moorhead said.
Another key hire was David Roach, who took over as the new athletic director in October 2012. He came with 22 years of athletic administrative experience under his belt, having served as the Athletic Director at both Brown and Colgate before taking his self-described “type A” personality to Rose Hill.
Roach says he knew exactly what he was getting himself into when he took over, and perhaps his most important personality trait is that he believes change is good.
“I always considered myself a renovator and a builder, and not a maintainer,” Roach said.
That is exactly the attitude he says he implemented when he started at Brown back in 1990. The football team was struggling and would continue to do so until 1993. It was in that year that Roach decided to make a coaching change that resulted in the program’s first winning record in seven seasons.
Before that, athletics at Brown had very low expectations.
“The prevailing attitude [when you would go to a game] was ‘Well, we just hope it can be close tonight,’” Roach said, looking back on his time at Brown. “Well for me, close is just not good enough.”
Both Moorhead and Gaitley had growing pains in their first seasons at Fordham. Moorhead’s team squandered a halftime lead on the road against nationally ranked Villanova and lost another road game at Lehigh in the final seconds. Gaitley’s squad, meanwhile, had seven freshmen. The Rams had 30 turnovers in the first game of the year.
However, they would go on to win 12 games, inching their way into the Atlantic 10 tournament on the final day of the regular season.
“I really thought that we maximized everything out of that group,” Gaitley said about her first year at Rose Hill. “The biggest thing was teaching the kids to learn how to win and to hate to lose.”
Meanwhile, the football team would turn some heads in its first year under Moorhead, who is quick to say he did not know much about the one-win debacle he was taking over.
“When [my staff and I] talked about what we were going to do moving forward, we said we weren’t going to dwell on the past and worry about things we weren’t a part of,” Moorhead said.
Fordham was quick to shed that past, as the rookie head coach led the Rams to one of the more improbable turnarounds in FCS Football, and Fordham’s first winning season since 2007. The team went 6-5, led by running back Carlton Koonce, who rushed for a school record 1,596 yards.
This year, Moorhead’s squad showed just how seriously it took each and every game. The Rams would affirm that expectation level this season, winning their first 10 games before finishing the regular season 11-1. They fell just short of the first undefeated season in school history, a goal so lofty just two seasons ago but well within the grasp of a rejuvenated Rams squad in 2013.
A team that had lost 10 games learned to take losing seriously. A team that had ranked 98th in the country in total offense in 2011 would rank sixth in 2013, culminating in the first home playoff game in school history. The Rams took care of Sacred Heart on their home field. The magical season continues this Saturday when they travel to Maryland to face Towson.
Like Gaitley, Coach Moorhead is thankful for the student-athletes he has been able to work with since arriving at Fordham.
“The excitement to see our name pop up on the screen for the FCS selection show was a validation of all the hard work and effort that our kids have put in over two years,” said Moorhead. “To see them rewarded for all the things they’ve done for the school and for the program was very gratifying.”
Women’s basketball has seen a similar turnaround. Year Two for Gaitley would be the charm, as the Rams earned 26 wins in 2012, a winning Atlantic 10 record for the first time ever, and a trip to the postseason. All of these accolades, according to Gaitley, are hatched on a personal level.
“You have to get the kids to believe, you have to get them to know that you care about them as people first and players second,” said Gaitley. “They have to want to play for you.”
This season, Gaitley’s third at Rose Hill, has started with the Rams turning last year’s losses into wins. The team has beaten Yale and University of the Pacific, two teams it lost to by double digits last year.
So what is the key to all this success? Both Moorhead and Gaitley have a strong belief that having success is about consistency over long stretches of time.
“One season makes a season,” Gaitley said. “A couple seasons makes a program, and that’s what we’re striving to do here.”
