 "Photo: Gregory Greene / Courtesy Photo")
It is a rarity in sports these days, especially college football, to see a coach stay with a team long enough to make a positive and lasting impression.
Sure you have your Joe Paternos and Bobby Bowdens, who have been at Penn State and Florida State for over 42 years. But today it is much more common to see coaches moving on after only a few years at a particular school.
Not Sean McDonnell. For 16 years, McDonnell has been on the sideline every Saturday in the fall for the UNH football team with some kind of coaching title. First it was quarterbacks/receivers coach, then offensive coordinator. And for the past nine years, it has been as the head coach.
Now entering his 10th season at the helm of the Wildcats, McDonnell has become one of the most successful coaches in the school's storied program. He is currently the third-winningest coach in program history with 62 wins, behind William Cowell (87) and UNH's greatest coach, Bill Bowes (175).
"It's been a great ride," said McDonnell. "It started tough. There's a lot of great memories of kids, coaches, families that are all part of UNH. From that point on, it's been a great run and we are trying to find ways to sustain that. You want to be able to keep the football program at a level where it's nationally recognized and nationally respected."
McDonnell was plenty familiar with the Durham campus when he arrived as part of the coaching staff in 1991. UNH is where the Saratoga Spring, N.Y. native played his college ball from 1975-1978. As a defensive back for the Wildcats, McDonnell started on the 1975 and 1976 teams that won the Yankee Conference championship.
Interestingly enough, the man who McDonnell played for at UNH, Bill Bowes, would also be the man McDonnell would replace as head coach in 1999. Bowes retired as head coach of the Wildcats after 26 years, the longest tenure of any head coach in UNH football history.
To get to Durham, however, McDonnell had to make a lot of stops along the way, which is nothing unusual for up-and-coming football coaches.
His coaching career started in Manchester, N.H., where he worked as an assistant for one year at Memorial High School in 1979 and then three years at West High School. McDonnell arrived on the collegiate stage in 1983 as a defensive coordinator at Hamilton College. He went on to coach at Boston University, Boston College, and Columbia before finding his way back to UNH.
"When I was young I wanted to be a coach, wanted to be a teacher. But I never thought about the college level," said McDonnell. "I was fortunate Steve Stenson (head coach) gave me a chance to go to Hamilton and I absolutely loved it there. The reason I came back here was that I always thought we had a chance to win"
The early years of McDonnell's head coaching career were not exactly ideal. His first team went 5-6 in 1999 and they followed that up with a 6-5 record the following year. Things went on a downhill from that point, as UNH won only seven games in two years, finishing 10th in the conference in 2001 and 2002.
But it was the 2003 that changed everything, according to McDonnell. Although the team finished the season 5-7, things were starting to look up. They won three of their last four games including one on the road against Hofstra and at home against Maine.
"You get to the point where you try to figure out if you are doing the right thing," said McDonnell. "And then slowly but surely with some of or young kids and some of our guys starting to get better, that 5-7 year had a really exciting end to it. And then you take off in 2004."
The team went 10-3 overall, finishing first in the conference and making it all the way to the NCAA quarterfinals in the FCS playoffs. Since that year, McDonnell has lead his team to an outstanding 37-14 record with three more trips to the playoffs, reaching the quarterfinals two more times.
The Wildcats are the only team in the Colonial Athletic Conference (CAA) to make it to the quarterfinals three years in a row. They have also found success against teams from the FBS in recent years, going 3-0 against teams who compete in college footballs top level under McDonnell.
McDonnell has also seen players he recruited become some of the best in the history of Division I-AA football. Ricky Santos quarterbacked McDonnell's offenses that made those playoff trips and won the Walter Payton Award in 2006. And no one will forget wide receiver David Ball who caught 51 touchdowns in his collegiate career, a Division I-AA record that was previously held by Jerry Rice.
However, McDonnell expects just as much success from his players off field as he does on the field.
"What I most proud of is we are doing great in the academic part of it," said McDonnell. "Our kids are graduating and handling themselves on campus. Second part I am most proud of is we got UNH back to a level in I-AA football where I think we are really respected."
College football does not make up all of McDonnell's life. Family and support of all UNH athletics are the things he said fill up his free time. McDonnell is a fixture at everything from volleyball to men's basketball games.
"You make time," said McDonnell of going to other sporting events. "I like the kids that go to this school. I like the student-athletes and the other coaches. I appreciate the effort they give. It's been brought up in me, that's what you do. I'm a junkie."
McDonnell's time as head coach has been historic and memorable. He has accomplished things that many before him could not. And the future looks bright, as the expectations for his teams have risen with the growing success of UNH football. But there is one thing McDonnell has not seen yet that he hopes will go from a dream to reality.
"I like this place. They are giving us an opportunity to be successful," said McDonnell. "I would just hope that somehow, some way, we could get a facility built here that would be deserving of the whole university and the whole state of New Hampshire. I would love to see that for everybody."
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