Poppe promises to bring ‘FIGHT’ as Union’s new head football coach (with video)

80

SHARES

Share on Facebook

Tweet

Follow us

Save

Share

SCHENECTADY — Jon Poppe’s philosophy as a football coach boils down to five simple words: “Family inspires growth, habits, team.”

Or, to spell it out, “FIGHT.”

“It’s the will to push back against something, to right what’s wrong,” Poppe said Friday in a press conference at Nott Memorial on the Union College campus as he was introduced as the 34th head football coach in Dutchmen program history.

During his interview process, Poppe shared that philosophy in a meeting with the Union team. It was one of the things that sold Dionis Polanco and his teammates almost immediately on the idea that Poppe was the ideal candidate to lead the Dutchmen forward.

@dgazette Poppe promises to bring ‘FIGHT’ as Union’s new head football coach – 1/27/23 – Daily Gazette

“I think he honestly won his meeting in the first two questions,” said Polanco, a rising senior defensive lineman. “He gave us that ‘FIGHT’ acronym. The energy he was exuding was through the roof all day. I got to meet with him twice, and it was great in both meetings. I think the vast majority of the team knew he was our guy once we walked out of the meeting.”

Poppe’s hiring was announced Thursday, the conclusion of a three-week national search of what Union athletic director Jim McLaughlin called a “very deep and talented pool” of candidates that the college looked at to replace Jeff Behrman, who stepped down in December after leading the Dutchmen for seven years to take the head coaching job at his alma mater, John Carroll University in Ohio.

Ultimately, Poppe was chosen as Behrman’s successor. A 2007 graduate of Williams College, Poppe comes to Schenectady having spent the last five years as the secondary coach and special teams coordinator at Harvard. That was his second stint with the Crimson, and he also spent three years as an assistant at Columbia.

At Columbia, he served under head coach Al Bagnoli, a Union Hall of Famer who coached the Dutchmen from 1982-91, and worked on a staff that included John Audino, who won a program-record 152 games as Union’s head coach from 1992 to 2015.

“They were instrumental in this process, from a research standpoint, from a support standpoint,” Poppe said of Bagnoli and Audino. “They really fueled the fire early on to put in for this position and to have a chance to talk with Jim about it.”

McLaughlin said that, throughout the interview process, it became clear that Poppe was the ideal candidate to lead Union football forward.

“I’m proud that we have somebody for our student-athletes that is not only going to teach the game of football, but he’s going to teach the game of life,” McLaughlin said. “He’s going to be a teacher, he’s going to be a mentor, he’s going to be an educator. He understands the Division III philosophy and the priorities we have here, and he understands that we want to win as well.”

Poppe spoke with energy and intensity throughout his introductory press conference, a trait he said he inherited from his mother.

“I’ve just always known I wanted to be a coach,” he said.

Poppe inherits a program that went 42-20 under Behrman, who took a Union team that was winless in its final season under Audino to a Liberty League championship and NCAA Division III playoff appearance within four years.

Union went 6-4 in 2022, including a 3-3 Liberty League record.

Poppe said that a “national search for an offensive coordinator” is underway, but promised a product on the gridiron that reflected the coach’s own intensity.

“We’re going to be competitive, there’s no doubt about that,” he said. “We’re going to have energy, we’re going to have passion, we’re going to play the game the right way.”

Poppe, who committed to giving Union and the surrounding community “everything I’ve got, every single freaking day,” was just as impressed with his new players during their initial meeting as they were with him.

“The questions they asked were very poignant and powerful,” he said, “about ‘Am I the person to lead them to a next step?’ and how I’m going to create a culture with them as a new head coach with an established team that had a great head coach that laid a great foundation for me to kind of take the reins and run here.”

While he won’t be in town over the weekend to attend Saturday’s Capital District Mayor’s Cup hockey doubleheader at MVP Arena — he’s got to head to New Jersey to pick up his wife, Anna, and 5-year-old daughter, Ava, before their move to the Capital Region — he’s already fully embraced the Union-RPI rivalry.

“I’m very familiar with the Dutchman Shoes,” he said, “and yeah, we’re going to beat RPI every chance we get.”

Count that as another thing that sold Polanco and his teammates on their new head coach.

“You’ve got to start to hate red,” Polanco said, referring to RPI’s primary color. “I hope he doesn’t have a lot of that in his closet, and I hope he loves the color garnet, because it means everything to us.”

80

SHARES

Share on Facebook

Tweet

Follow us

Save

Share

Categories: College Sports, Email Newsletter, Sports, Sports, Union College