As fans of college athletics, we don’t give nearly enough credit to all the men and women working behind the scenes to make sure that everything runs smoothly. One of those people at Marist College is Mike Ferraro.
Mike Ferraro is the Assistant Athletic Director and Sports Information Director (SID) for Marist College. He was promoted to that role in September 2016. Ferraro is the primary contact for football, men’s basketball and softball. But his job does not stop there. “I also supervise our staff which includes those who are the contacts for all 23 of our Division I sports,” Ferraro said. “The goal is to get the best publicity we can for our teams, student athletes and coaches.” Much of Ferraro’s hard-working efforts are done through writing, statistics and records keeping, social media, and awards.
How did he get there?
Ferraro earned his bachelor’s in Communications, with a concentration in Radio/TV/Film, from Marist in 2001. While in college, he was the Sports Editor of The Circle, Marist’s student newspaper, and was also Assistant Sports Director of the campus radio station, WMCR.
Ferraro’s first job out of college came from the Poughkeepsie Journal in 2001. While at “the Journal”, he worked as a sports reporter, copy editor and free-lance writer. Aside from his regular job, he was also the play-by-play voice of Marist’s women’s basketball from 2000-2007.
Then, in 2006, Ferraro was given an ultimatum. “With the Poughkeepsie Journal we had a change in leadership and I was told I could no longer be there on a full-time basis and be able to broadcast women’s basketball. With where I was going at that point in my life I wanted to pursue broadcasting,” he stated. Ferraro was grateful for the opportunity that he was given but for him it was time to move on. “Working at the [Poughkeepsie] Journal was a great experience in terms of the people that I worked with, the lessons that I learned, in terms of skills, and how to be a professional.”
During the 2006-2007 season, Ferraro served as an Assistant SID and a primary contact for women’s basketball. In his first season in that role, Marist women’s basketball became the first team in Metro Atlantic Athletic Conference (MAAC) history to advance to the Sweet 16 in the NCAA Tournament. “It’s amazing to this day,” he said. When Ferraro started doing play-by-play, women’s basketball had gone a decade [1994-2003] without a winning record. “Then Coach [Brian] Georges comes here and we turned it around… To see how we built it, and then to see it get to that point and have a front row seat for that, it was just a tremendous experience.”
From time-to-time, Ferraro takes a trip down memory lane to remember all the great moments that he’s fortunate to be apart of, as an SID. The Red Foxes have made an appearance in the NCAA Tournament 10 times. Between his time as a broadcaster and SID, the women’s basketball team has won 10 MAAC Championships, including nine in a row from 2004-2014. The baseball team also won the MAAC Championship in both 2009 and 2017. In 2016, the softball won the MAAC Championship after winning 45 games, the most in program history. Most recently, Marist hosted the University of Maryland, Baltimore County during the opening round of the 2019 NCAA Men’s Lacrosse Championships.
For Ferraro, the most stressful part of the job surrounds the planning and time demands when one season is finishing up and another is starting. “When those seasons overlap it’s a difficult time of year because there’s a lot of demands placed on time.” As an SID, Mike just hopes that he doesn’t leave anything out while planning. Here is an example of how hectic Ferraro’s schedule can get, “On [Friday] November 8th, we had our basketball season opener at Virginia Military Institute. That night after the game, Tim Murray [Athletic Director] drove me to an airport hotel, and the following morning we had a 7 A.M. flight out of Roanoke [VA], to a connecting flight to Charlotte [NC], into Dayton [OH] for our football game. We had a 1 P.M. kickoff at Dayton. We then took a bus to Cincinnati and then flew to Laguardia airport,” he thoroughly explained. The next day Ferraro was back to the drawing board, as he began planning for next weeks’ schedule.
Here are some things that you may not know about “Mike”. Ferraro has been a voter in the FCS Top 25 Poll since 2010. He also works for the Hudson Valley Renegades, a Class A minor league team for the Tampa Bay Rays, as the primary official scorer since 2009.
All in all, much of the work on the this website wouldn’t be possible without him.
Edited by David Bieber
Image Credited To GoRedFoxes