Twenty-three minutes into his introductory press conference May 27, the new lacrosse coach got to talk about, well, lacrosse. The word “offense” tumbled out of a reporter’s mouth, and Kevin Cassese’s eyebrows rose.
“Great,” Cassese said. “Love talking lacrosse. This is awesome.”
He went on for nearly three minutes, his last answer of the day — and his longest. He loved talking about lacrosse because for the rest of the press conference, he had to talk about either the controversial coaching turnover, or the hiring process or recruiting.
Or resources. More than anything else, resources. Cassese fielded multiple questions about fundraising and athletic department support and alumni relationships — those are the things that zipped to the top of his checklist almost the moment he accepted the coaching post.
“Day one on the job and day two on the job is talking about those types of things,” Cassese said. “Having those conversations, when it comes to roster management, when it comes to recruitment, all of the above.”
Cassese’s introductory press conference came 10 days from the one-year anniversary of House v. NCAA, the landmark settlement that introduced revenue sharing to college sports and, crucially for Olympic sports like men’s lacrosse, removed longtime scholarship limits.
Before his interview, Cassese talked with former Virginia Coach Dom Starsia. They talked about resources, Starsia said, “a great deal,” and Starsia told Cassese he had to ask Athletic Director Carla Williams one question.
“What’s the plan for scholarship support going forward?” Starsia said.
House opened the door to hundreds of new potential scholarships across college sports. Gone were the limits that capped men’s lacrosse, for example, at 12.6 scholarships to be distributed among a team. Now teams can award as many scholarships as they can finance within a 48-player roster limit.
Among the teams at the top of college sports, Virginia is trailing many of its contemporaries. Tennis Coach Andres Pedroso was working on endowing his 4.5 scholarships prior to House — at SEC and other ACC schools, “they either endowed their scholarships years ago or they’ve raised a tremendous amount of money to distribute more scholarships,” Pedroso said in October on the “Inside Virginia Athletics with Carla Williams” podcast.
Fundraising is the newest battleground.
“That’s the key to the future,” Williams said after the presser. “We feel like we’re down the road and looked around the corner and feel really good.”
Starsia looks at the men’s lacrosse program and sees room for growth. Virginia, he said, needs to “evolve quickly” with a plan “to grow the program.”
“My sense is that Carla has only recently really discovered about lacrosse,” Starsia said. “In the sense that I think she’s starting to feel the enthusiasm and the history of it.”
In other words, Starsia thinks Williams is only now discovering the potential of the alumni base and donors to bolster the program. He suggested to her that she challenge the program, give it a fundraising target. $10 million over two years, hypothetically, he said.
“They wanted a little guidance in terms of, if I’m going to give this money, where’s it going,” Starsia said. “How are we going to be able to increase our scholarships and do some things like that?”
Virginia has more to offer recruits than just money. It has elite academics, a beautiful campus and gleaming new facilities.
In this age, that is still important. There are just more dimensions.
“Some of the alums talk to me about, ‘We have so much more to offer a kid,’” Starsia said. “And we do, and Virginia needs to do a good job selling the things that are special about this place. But the scholarship component is part of that.”
Cassese made a point in his press conference to quash rumors that men’s lacrosse does not have support from the athletic department. He referenced the “narratives” out there and then stated categorically that Williams and the athletic department support men’s lacrosse.
Williams told reporters that “yes,” the athletic department has had to prioritize revenue sports since House. She explained it on her podcast last summer. Since the dawn of revenue sharing, revenue from football and men’s basketball has to be redirected back into those sports — shared with the athletes — creating a hole in the budget.
The rest of the sports — and even football and basketball — have to rely much more on fundraising.
“The courts have ruled that the landscape has changed,” Williams said after the press conference. “It is going to take a lot of work, a lot of fundraising, and not just with men’s lacrosse.”
Cassese may be an ideal hire in that sense. He has long said — and it has long been said about him — that his primary strength is relationship-building. Players have referred to him as a “player’s coach.”
In the summer before he started as an offensive coordinator at Virginia, he drove some five hours to meet with star attackman Connor Shellenberger. He flew to Toronto to meet with other star attackman Payton Cormier. That emphasis on relationship-building is pivotal to fundraising.
Cassese is also experienced under the pressure of fundraising. At Lehigh, where he served as head coach for 16 years, fundraising was about more than competing. It was existential.
He started there in 2008. The team’s fundraising budget that year, he said, totaled $18,000. They put that toward the operating budget, and it got the team halfway to being able to play its first game.
“We had to really bolster that,” Cassese said, “and that took a lot of relationship-building, it took a lot of cultivating the alumni base and getting them active, engaged and involved in our program, and I think that’s going to be the same here.”
He feels like he already has good relationships at Virginia. But he has a lot more of them to build, and he used the day and a half between the hiring announcement and the press conference to start working.
Williams and Cassese both said Virginia is in position to compete for national titles.
“We have what we need to compete for a championship,” Williams said. “Can we enhance it? Yes.”
If it keeps all its players and incoming recruiting class, Virginia may boast the most stacked roster in the country next season. Its recruiting class ranks fourth in the nation.
Cassese and Williams will keep working to make that possible.
“All you want as a coach [is] ‘Just give me a chance to compete with my peers,’” Starsia said. “That’s all.”
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