By Sarah Moomaw, News Staff
It has been six years since Athletic Director Peter Roby moved into the glass office across from Solomon Court in the Cabot Physical Education Center.
In his tenure, he’s had to make hard decisions about the football program and coaching staffs, but in a sit down with The News on Friday, Roby said he’s never been more excited to be a Husky.
“I feel like I’ve just started my job,” he said. “I’m more excited now than I’ve ever been and I can’t wait to see what the future looks like.”
Roby was referring to the future of the Huskies after one of their most successful fall seasons. All four fall teams made their Colonial Athletic Association tournament and two earned national attention with NCAA championship bids.
In the April 12 issue of The News, Roby said Northeastern was a “sleeping giant,” but now he says it has risen.
“When I took the job six years ago, I said Northeastern was a sleeping giant and if we woke it up there’d be hell to pay,” Roby said. “The giant has awoken. I mean that. We’re just getting started. It’s not bragging – we’re dangerous as an athletic department.”
That danger comes from Northeastern moving up the college athletic ladder in terms of notoriety.
The field hockey team earned an at-large NCAA bid after an impressive season, which was spent entirely on the road, due the lack of a home field. Next season, that will no longer be the case as the department is building the program their own field in Dedham (more on page 1).
The team’s attitude, despite having to board a bus for every practice and every game, is something Roby hopes the rest of the athletic department can recognize.
“[They] didn’t complain one time and all they did was go out and compete their brains out from the very first day,” he said. “For me, field hockey in my view, is everything that we hope our athletic program will be about: Toughness, character, courage, no excuses, really talented, committed, great students, great people, but when they get on the field they’re not afraid to rip your heart out and I love it.”
The men’s soccer team won the program’s first CAA title since joining the conference in 2005. The win clinched an automatic bid to the national tournament.
Last week, men’s soccer head coach Brian Ainscough credited their record book season – 14 wins is a program most – to having been fully funded for the first time. Those extra funds came from the final steps of redistributing money that had been tied up in football scholarships.
“We made a commitment to those athletes that wanted to remain and get their degrees from Northeastern that we would honor those,” Roby said. “If you had people in their freshman year that wanted to stay you wouldn’t be able to take advantage of any of the scholarship reallocation because they were on scholarship and we were going to honor that.”
Additionally, Roby said that some of those scholarships have also been placed back into the general financial aid pool to non-student athletes as originally stated would happen in the reallocation program that was designed when the program was cut at the end of the 2009 season.
On top of the fall success, Roby said he likes what he sees in the winter sports.
“We’ve got talented players,” Roby said. “We’ve got a good young roster of talent, good mix of upperclassmen and young players. There’s quite a bit of potential there.”
The women’s basketball team is currently 5-2 for the first time since 2009.
“I really like what I’m seeing from women’s basketball,” Roby said. “At the end of last year we felt that the core of returning players was good enough that if they hung in there and kept working that they had a chance to do some damage.”
As for hockey, he recognized that Hockey East is considered a top league to play in, meaning the competition is tough. Currently, head coach Jim Madigan’s squad is skating through a rough patch, having won just three of 11 conference games this season.
“Hockey East is unforgiving and so we’re still in the growing pains portion of hockey on the men’s side,” Roby said. “We’ve had some glimpses of excitement but we haven’t been consistent yet. We’re looking for consistency.”
Men’s basketball is also in a slide after their Tuesday night 72-66 loss to the University of Massachusetts-Amherst, dropping them to .500 on the season. Additionally, the women’s hockey team has felt a few of the departures from last season, but broke their losing streak last night by knocking off the Dartmouth University Big Green, 3-2, in overtime.
Roby said that the goal of the department isn’t strictly in the wins and losses columns, but about using sport as a way to help students succeed.
“We’re here to educate young people and we use sport in which to do that and put them in a place to be as successful as they can be athletically, personally and academically,” he said. “So we’re going to define success in ways that don’t just include wins and losses, and the day that I start doing that is the day that I’ll quit because that’s not what we’re here to do.”
