Dan Mara: ECAC's newest leader
BY JOE PALLADINO REPUBLICAN-AMERICAN
The phone rang twice before the call was answered. The voice on
the other end of the line said, "Dan Mara."
Dan Mara? He answers his own phone? No secretary? No
call-screening? You can call the president of the Eastern College
Athletic Conference direct? These days, you can't get the president
of the PTA on the phone, let alone the man at the top of the
largest collegiate sports association on the planet, save the
NCAA.
Dan Mara, 53, Waterbury resident, former associate vice president
for athletics and fitness at Post University, current commissioner
of the Central Atlantic Collegiate Conference, member of three
regional halls of fame, including the New England Basketball Hall
of Fame, and current chairman of the NCAA Sportsmanship and Ethical
Conduct Committee, is your new president of the ECAC.
Someone should be answering his phone.
If you are of a certain age, you remember the days when the ECAC
was a mover and shaker in college athletics, before the NCAA and
powerful athletic conferences took over control of the universe.
You might wonder just what does the ECAC do these days? And more
importantly, noting that the ECAC central office is on Cape Cod,
the first question for Mara is, are you moving to the cape?
"No," he said. "I will still live in Waterbury. I am still the
commissioner of the Central Atlantic Collegiate Conference, and our
main office is here, in New Haven, right next to Pepe's Pizza."
What a life this guy has. He lunches at Pepe's and hangs out on the
cape to do ECAC business. But Dan, what exactly is ECAC
business?
"The ECAC is one of those organizations you've known all your life,
and to be a part of its board, for me, is a tremendous honor," he
said. "But it is an organization that has changed."
Prior to the coming of the Big East, the ECAC, as described by
Mara, "was all things to all people. It was a primary conduit to
get to postseason play. It is where you got all your officials
from. It is where all the athletic directors went for conventions
and professional development.
"It was," Mara added, "the front porch of intercollegiate athletics
in the East."
That world exists no longer. Conferences now live and breathe all
on their own. That does not alter the ECAC's unique place in the
collegiate sports world. Long thought of as a New England network,
the ECAC consists of 321 Division I, II and III member schools. It
encompasses the mighty, like Duke University, and the mini, like
Albertus Magnus.
In some ways, the ECAC still is all things to all people. It still
runs the IC4A track championships, and rowing and lacrosse
conferences, and it still retains its stature and tradition. As
Mara pointed out, "Schools like to have the ECAC banner hanging in
their gymnasiums."
But now it is time to do more. Mara believes the ECAC can step up
its services to its hundreds of eastern colleges. That will be his
leadership goal as chairman of the board.
"We will still provide championship opportunities and assignment of
officials, but we have to ask ourselves, ‘What else can we do
for the membership?' The ECAC has a great staff and a committed
board. I think we will make some changes and find ways to keep
relative into the next millennium."
And it will all take place from the three most significant places
in New England: Wooster Street, Cape Cod and right here, Waterbury,
the center of it all.
