Success is simple - New St. A coach brings resume of achievement, focus on basics

Bow Editor — Thu, 07 Dec 2006 19:15:00 GMT

If someone had told Rick Senatore five years ago he’d be taking over a college lacrosse program, he probably would have laughed.

If someone told him 10 years ago he’d one day leave the world of Wall Street, it’d have been the same response. Heck, if you’d told him when he was a little kid that he’d one day leave Long Island, his response would have been, “No way.” He’s a “Long Island boy.”

So ask Senatore – a Bedford resident, the former Hopkinton boys lacrosse coach and newest leader of the Saint Anselm College men’s lacrosse team – about his long-term plans for the Hawks, and you’re asking the wrong questions. Ask him what it takes to make a successful lacrosse team, though, and you’re on to something.

Since leaving the world of finances for lacrosse five years ago, it seems everything Senatore touches turns to gold. After founding Granite State Lacrosse with Bishop Guertin coach Chris Cameron in 2002, Senatore has helped it grow from a single summer camp into an indoor league, clinics, a “goalie academy” and the state’s only elite boys club team, the New Hampshire Tomahawks.

In 2004, at the same time he started at Hopkinton as a math teacher, he helped start the boys program and, after only two varsity seasons, led those Hawks to the state semifinals and earned Coach of the Year honors.

And now, in what Cameron called Senatore’s “next challenge,” the UMass-Amherst grad aims to lead Saint Anselm into the elite echelon of the Northeast- 10.

Obviously, Senatore recognizes the big picture. But looking down the road and past the details isn’t what got him here.

“(At Hopkinton), I really stressed a lot of the basics and discipline and really kept it simple. And we got real good at the simple things,” said the 37-year-old Senatore, who has lived in Bedford for roughly 10 years.

“And it’s kind of still the philosophy I have here, although it’s a much higher level of lacrosse. Those little things are important, and you can’t start a team without those little things.”

Senatore, of course, isn’t starting the Saint Anselm program. At 4-11 last season, it’s traditionally been a middle-of-thepack team in the NE-10, he said.

Yet, with a more up-tempo style and commitment from the type of blue-collar athletes Senatore is looking for, he intends to lift the Hawks past teams like Bentley and Saint Michael’s and among the likes of Merrimack, Bryant and Le Moyne.

It’ll take work, he knows, but the hardest part for Senatore may have been what he had to leave behind. With a strong junior class now becoming seniors, Hopkinton is poised for another stellar year this spring.

But when Saint Anselm athletics director Ed Cannon approached him about the job, everything from the logistics to the opportunity to the challenge made it something “I really couldn’t pass up,” Senatore said.

“He just has a passion for the sport of lacrosse and a passion to coach,” Cameron said. “I think St. A is lucky to get him, but he knows he’s lucky to be there.

“And they’re committed to building a program there,” he added. “And he’s the right guy to get that program going.”

Hopkinton News : Bedford

Success is simple - New St. A coach brings resume of achievement, focus on basics