UMaine hires two assistants for Tyler

loading...

The transition of the University of Maine athletic department under new athletic director Suzanne Tyler continues with the addition of two administrators.

Dino Mattessich joined the staff last week as the Senior Associate Athletic Director, while Craig Turnbull has been hired as the Assistant Athletic Director for Development and arrived on campus earlier this week.

Tyler, who in September replaced interim AD Walter Abbott, said Mattessich and Turnbull were chosen by two different search committees that were formed last fall.

“We had a skeleton crew,” Tyler said. “We’re starting to get past most of the things that were on hold and we’re trying to move on.”

The athletic department had been understaffed for the last several months after Anne McCoy and Mike Palisi resigned their respective positions.

McCoy, formerly the associate AD for finance, left in May to take a similar position at Saint Louis University. Palisi, who served as the assistant athletic director for external affairs and development, left UMaine in June to open an athletic consulting business in New Jersey.

Mattessich, 43, comes to Maine from Towson State University in Maryland. He served in several capacities there from 1983-1995, including associate director of athletics from 1988 until his recent departure.

At Towson State, Mattessich supervised several sports programs and monitored the $4.5 million budget for the school’s 21 varsity sports. In his newly created position at UMaine, Mattessich will be second in command to Tyler.

“He’ll be the person to go to when the athletic director is not available,” Tyler said. “His primary concern, to start, is with fiscal affairs, with the ticket office and all of that.”

Tyler knew Mattessich from his days at the University of Maryland, where he was head lacrosse coach from 1980-83. He is a 1974 graduate of Maryland, where he received a B.S. in physical education and was a three-year letterman for the lacrosse team, including its 1973 national championship squad.

Mattessich earned a master’s in athletic administration fromIllinois in 1976 and received a Ph.d in education from Morgan State in 1994.

The 31-year-old Turnbull comes to Maine after a two-year stint at Siena College in New York, where he served as director of alumni affairs and assistant director of development. His primary duty at UMaine will be fund raising.

Turnbull was the assistant director of athletic development at the University of Connecticut from 1991-93 and was an assistant baseball coach for the Huskies. He graduated from Siena in 1987 with a bachelor’s degree in marketing and management, and also played baseball there.

In 1991, Turnbull earned a master’s degree in sport marketing and management at UConn.

Sue Randall, who had been working as the athletic business manager on an interim basis, has been added to the athletic staff on a permanent basis in that capacity.

The loss and tie at Boston University this past weekend has left the University of Maine with little chance of catching the Terriers in the race for Hockey East’s regular-season championship.

Third-place Maine is 15 points behind BU and each has 10 games left.

Second-place UMass-Lowell has 48 points, three more than Maine, but the River Hawks have played one more game than the Bears and they still have three games left against the Terriers.

Of Maine’s final 10 games, only two are against teams with winning records in league play: Providence and UML. Both games are in Orono.

“Finishing first would be nice but that’s really tough to get now,” said junior defenseman Jason Mansoff. “We’d like to get home ice and get on a roll heading into the playoffs.”

The Bears viewed the two BU games as a valuable gauge.

BU, the nation’s top-ranked team, was 8-0-1 at Walter Brown Arena prior to its 4-3 win and 3-3 tie against Maine, and had outscored teams 67-27 there.

“I’m taking a positive light,” said junior center Dan Shermerhorn. “Our Novemeber game with them was a whitewash (5-2 BU). We were never in that game.

“This past weekend, we proved we’re as good as anybody in the country,” added Shermerhorn.

Center Brad Purdie said that the Bears showed they have the best goaltender in the country in Blair Allison and “one of the top three defenses.”

“I loved the way our team played on Saturday night,” said interim head coach Greg Cronin. “We sacrificed our body. We hit everything that moved. If somebody didn’t hit, he’d hear it from me or his teammates on the bench. BU doesn’t like to get hit.

“It was our 11th game in 25 nights and it would have been easy for our players to say they were tired and to use that as an excuse. But nobody did,” added Cronin.

Sophomore defenseman Jeff Libby said the Bears must do a better job in the defensive zone after allowing 94 shots on goal over the weekend.