By Stephen Marcus, Newsday
An occasional look at Southampton College, which is in its final year of intercollegiate athletics.
Here is what it comes down to for the women's basketball team at Southampton: The head coach quit and was replaced by the sports information director. The assistant coach is a month out of college. Only seven players are in uniform.
Those ingredients would suggest desperate straits. But that is not the case for Southampton, which expects to challenge for the NYCAC title in early March. The Lady Colonials are 10-6 overall and 10-3 in the conference and already have beaten first-place St. Thomas Aquinas (13-1) and second-place Bridgeport (10-2).
The coaching crisis occurred Dec. 7 when Pat McGunnigle resigned five games into the season with a record of 2-3. The third-year coach cited personal reasons but added, "I spent nine months of blood, sweat and tears putting that team together, I really did. I recruited, I unrecruited, I recruited again."
Athletic director Mary Topping believes McGunnigle was exasperated. "Basically, I think it was just frustration of taking apart something he had built; that's my take on it," Topping said. Athletics will end in June and undergraduate classes will be moved to C.W. Post.
Topping had to find a coach, and her first choice was ... "Me," she said. But her administrative duties would not allow that. So Topping turned to Cassie Arroyo, no stranger to multi-tasking. Arroyo, 28, is the college's sports information director, intramural director and head softball coach and also teaches classes in physical conditioning.
Arroyo was given the job the day before Southampton was to play Molloy. She won that game and is 8-3 as the head coach. Not bad for a first-timer on the bench. "I had been around the team doing stats," she said. "I also had assisted on the high school level. I'm glad I was able to step in and help them out."
She seems very calm and collected on the bench. Not so, Arroyo said. "It's all inside churning, trust me. I get very nervous. I don't sleep."
She doesn't have time for rest. Softball's last season is about to begin and she plans to hold as many practices as she can in both sports, though basketball gets a day off after some games. Fatigue is setting in with the injury-depleted roster. "They can barely move," Arroyo said, "but they got to keep plugging away. It is almost over."
The team is appreciative that Arroyo came to the rescue. "It put a lot of stress on us," sophomore guard Leah Getz said of McGunnigle's departure. "We knew nobody else wanted to come in [because the program is folding]. Cassie knows enough about basketball. She is not going to quit on us. She keeps things real positive and that is what we need right now."
Junior guard Amber Gooden, who has the same great-grandmother as former major-leaguer Dwight Gooden, said, "I've had plenty of talks with Cassie and obviously she has an understanding of the game. She's like having another team member."
Arroyo said she also has received a great deal of help from 22-year-old assistant Jamie Pojed, who played on the team last season.
Southampton should have no problem qualifying for the NYCAC Tournament, which takes eight teams. But the goal is winning the conference. "People think with everything we've gone through, they have to feel bad for us," sophomore forward Sarah Mahan said. "We know what we are capable of. We can pull it off."