By Tony Fiorello/WNY Athletics
The Marist Red Foxes of the Pioneer Football League are going through a transitional phase, but don’t take that to mean a rebuild.
New head coach Mike Willis is taking over for the retiring Jim Parady this year, and he’s attempting to turn around the program by accomplishing three things.
The first, according to linebackers coach Tom Biscardi, is establishing a winning culture.
.jpeg "Stockton Photos/Marist Athletics")
Stockton Photos/Marist Athletics
“The main objective we’re trying to accomplish in our first year – and coach Willis says this all the time – is we're just trying to get as good as we can as fast as we can,” Biscardi said. “Trying to get our stuff installed and our way of doing things throughout the program, from the weight room to the on-the-field stuff and schematically, and just our process and everything that goes along with that as well.”
The second way Marist is trying to alter the team’s course is by having coaches on the team’s staff who have familiarity with one another and have a common way of thinking. Biscardi is exhibit A of that.
Since playing linebacker at – and then later establishing his career at – The College of New Jersey, Biscardi has slowly been working his way up the coaching ladder. He then joined the staff at Princeton as defensive quality control, where he first met his future boss while Willis served as the team’s offensive coordinator, which helped establish trust between the two.
After a three-year stint at Ithaca as the team’s defensive run game coordinator, linebackers coach and recruiting coordinator, Biscardi got the call from Willis to reunite at Marist.
“It's been fun and a good ride,” Biscardi said. “I didn’t have a great collegiate career as a player, but I had a great experience as a player and I had a great group of coaches at New Jersey who helped me develop. Then I got up to Princeton, which was awesome because I grew up 20 minutes from there and my family is from the area too.
“So I grew up going to Princeton games and it was a dream to work there for 14 months, just an awesome opportunity to win a lot of games and learn a lot about football. Marist has been great so far, having a pretty rich relationship with Coach Willis from our time at Princeton and when he got the job, I knew how excited he was and knowing the kind of coach he is and everything he has planned for the program. I think it was kind of a no-brainer to continue my career with Coach Willis again.”
The third goal for Marist is to recruit well within the state of New York. Biscardi, who is responsible for the areas of Sections VI, V, IV and III, thinks that his new school could do some damage when it comes to collecting talent from within New York.
“Coming from Ithaca and seeing what I saw there with the players we had on our roster from New York State and then with two other teams in the state who had success – whether it was Albany succeeding with like 40 kids from New York or Cortland with a roster that’s almost entirely consisted of New York kids winning a national championship at the Division III level – that was, I think, really great to see,” Biscardi said. “When you see other teams do it, we’re going to try and see if we can find some guys like them who can help us get this thing going to where we want to be.”
While acknowledging that New York doesn’t have the same amount of football talent as other states such as Florida, Texas, California, Ohio and Pennsylvania, Biscardi also realizes that New York is an untapped market for football players. There are hidden gems everywhere, and Marist is determined to find them.
“I think the level of football in the state is good, from one end of the state to the other whether you're on Long Island or in Buffalo,” Biscardi said. “It’s definitely under-recruited. Seeing the success of some of the programs in the state has kind of opened up some eyes to see the kind of players that are out here – the ability to recruit good football players and build a team with guys from the state, I think, will be big for us too.”
