Where Are They Now: John Danowski, Men's Lacrosse

A graduate of East Meadow High School and the head coach of C.W. Post from 1983 to 1985, John Danowski became the fourth coach in Hofstra men’s lacrosse history in 1986. Danowski would go on to coach the Pride for 21 seasons and had many accomplishments during his time as head coach of the Pride. From 1986 until his departure in 2006, Danowski guided Hofstra to eight NCAA Tournament appearances, won eight conference titles between the America East and Colonial Athletic Association and posted a record of 192-123, making him the second-winningest coach in Hofstra men’s lacrosse history.

In 1993 Danowski led Hofstra to its first NCAA Tournament appearance in 15 years, beating three teams ranked in the top 10. Danowski and the Pride earned their first NCAA Tournament win in program history with a thrilling 9-8 decision over Massachusetts. He would later be named NCAA Division I Coach of the Year for leading the Pride back to the NCAA Tournament for the first time since 1978. Danowski would also win CAA Coach of the Year honors four times during his tenure.

Thirty-four USILA All-America selections came from Hofstra during Danowski’s tenure, including first-team selections Brian Spallina, Doug Shanahan, Nicky Polanco, Brett Moyer and Chris Unterstein. In addition, Shanahan won the inaugural Tewaaraton Award as the nation’s top player in 2001. Furthermore, 30 Hofstra players were named to the annual North-South All-Star Game while he served as head coach, and many Hofstra players would go on to play professionally and represent the United States at the International Lacrosse Federation World Championships.

In the summer of 2006 Danowski was named head men’s lacrosse coach at Duke University and saw immediate success with the Blue Devils. With Duke, Danowski has won three NCAA National Championships (2010, 2013, 2014) and was named Coach of the Year in 2010. Since 2007, Danowski has gone 193-61 and has made the NCAA Tournament every year with the Blue Devils.

In 2015 Danowski was named head coach of Team USA Lacrosse and earned a gold medal at the 2018 World Lacrosse Championship in Tel Aviv, Israel in a thrilling 9-8 contest. Danowski would be retained as Team USA head coach, making him the first coach to lead Team USA in multiple world championships.

A former standout attackman at Rutgers, Danowski still holds the school record for assists in a season (54, ’73) and for points (14) and assists (9) in a single game. Danowski is currently married with two children and four grandchildren.

How did you become the head coach of Hofstra men’s lacrosse?

Hofstra was de-emphasizing lacrosse at the time that I got the position. Harry Royle was the coach, but also the defensive coordinator for the football team. They were looking for someone to coach lacrosse part-time, but the position wasn’t very high paying, so that knocked out a lot of candidates who would’ve fit well at Hofstra but couldn’t afford to take the position. 

I was teaching science in high school and coaching at C.W. Post, and Hofstra had a great history with athletics and men’s lacrosse in particular. I loved my time at Post, but the opportunity to coach at Hofstra – they had turf, stadium lights, better facilities – seemed like a no-brainer. Had Hofstra made the position full-time, I don’t think I would’ve gotten the job because there were a lot of great candidates out there with more experience than I had. So I was really lucky that things turned out the way that they did.

Growing up on Long Island, what were your impressions of Hofstra as you stepped into your role as head men’s lacrosse coach?

My brother was a huge influence because he graduated from Hofstra and played football and lacrosse for Howdy Myers. So I grew up going to Hofstra games when I was in the third grade, going to Calkins Gymnasium watching Steve Nisenson and coach Butch van Breda Kolff, watching all these guys play football and lacrosse for Hofstra. So I knew about the history of Hofstra athletics.

In high school, we would ride our bikes to watch the Jets practices at Hofstra, watch guys like Joe Namath on campus. So in terms of the facilities and the history and the tradition, I was all-in. When I got here, the program was a bit funky; A bunch of guys had left or transferred, so I saw it as an opportunity to start fresh.

What sort of changes were made to improve the program from three wins the year before your hire to 12 wins in your third year?

I don’t know if we made so many changes, more so we went and put in the hard work. When I was at Post, we had no lacrosse office; the trunks of our cars were our offices. So we really didn’t need a lot when we came to Hofstra. All we needed was a field and guys who were eager to play, and the guys who stayed loved to play. We started recruiting and bringing in guys that had the same vision we had of where Hofstra belonged in the bigger picture. There was a combination of college transfers from Post and Nassau Community College, and then freshmen, and we went to work. It wasn’t anything magical or radical; we coached what we believed in and we were all comfortable coaching with each other and we liked each other. We believed in the fundamentals and we believed in having fun.

You make a breakthrough with the program in 1993, qualifying for the NCAA Tournament for the first time since 1978 and getting the first NCAA Tournament win in program history. What was that like for you to achieve all that?

Well, it was a big deal for us in a lot of ways because that was my first year as a full-time head coach. The athletic department was evolving and for the first six years I was there, I was also an academic advisor. I would work in academic advising, and then at 3:30 I would coach lacrosse. I was also offered a position as the assistant athletic director for six months out of the year, from when lacrosse season ended until January 1, and Harry Royle would take over for the other six months. This had continued until the 1993 season, and it affirmed to me that if I were able to focus on just coaching lacrosse, that we could be a really successful program.

That UMass game, at home on a Saturday night, was magical. They had one of the top players in the country in Mark Millon and we won by a goal. It was an incredibly exciting time to be at Hofstra.

In 2006 Hofstra lacrosse had its best season in program history. What was it like to coach and be a part of that 17-win team?

We had this incredible collection of seniors that really set the tone for the group. It was John Keysor, Tim Treubig, Rob Bonaguro, and John Orsen, and these guys were tough as nails, they loved each other, and they loved being at Hofstra. That was always the common theme when you get a group of guys that loved the place they were at – they loved Hofstra and everything about it – and they loved each other, and they were very coachable. 

We were also very good across the field. We had Athan Ianucci, we had Tommy Dooley as a freshman, and Chris Unterstein was playing the best lacrosse of his life and was a Tewaaraton Award finalist. Defensively, we had Brett Moyer, Julian Watts, Kevin Unterstein, Ryan Kelaher, and those guys were good players as individuals but the whole was greater than the parts. Nobody cared about who got the credit; it was a classic story of them wanting to be successful together. We had a lot of chemistry with that team to go along with the talent, and that chemistry was the difference in games being maybe 14-6 instead of 8-6.

Nick Colleluori was on the squad and was diagnosed with cancer during that 2006 season. What was that like for you to see this walk-on freshman going through that ordeal?

That fall we had played North Carolina in a fall tournament at Stony Brook and I remember Nick being fearless when the ball was on the ground, trying to run through a ground ball and make contact. It was a Saturday morning at 10:30 in the morning or something, and that was my first real impression of Nick watching him compete. And then when his mom calls and tells us they have the diagnosis and she asked if we could meet with him outside his classroom, which I did. And we soon met in my office and Nick didn’t flinch; he was like ‘alright, I’m going home and we’re going to take care of this.’ And there was very little emotion, very little time for sympathy. It was time for confidence and an ‘I’m going to take care of it’ attitude. 

In the springtime, we wanted to honor him. His nickname was “Fathead”, so somebody came up with the Fathead stickers, and when he either watched the film or if he was well enough to come to the game, his job was to hand out the stickers after the game to the players who deserved a sticker. It was a really cool time in that team’s development, because of his role on the team, and keeping him engaged with the program. The stickers were for hustle or tough plays, not goals or being the star of the team. It was for the kinds of plays that Nick was known for making. And the guys wore those stickers on the back of their helmets with a tremendous amount of pride.

Then when I left, I felt a little disconnected. I kind of felt like I had run out on him and I felt guilty. I was in touch with Seth [Tierney], his brother Michael and the family, and I had talked to Nick a couple weeks before his passing, and I remember that last conversation. Those are cherished conversations between me and him. The funeral was incredible; we packed that church with all the people that he touched in his short time. It was an incredible testament to his personality, his family, and being involved in sports. His high school football and lacrosse teammates, classmates, everyone he knew at Hofstra came to be there. It was really an incredible outpouring of love for his parents and his family.

Following the 2006 season at Hofstra, you became the head men’s lacrosse coach at Duke. How did that come about?

It starts with the fact that my son, Matt, was attending Duke at the time. If Matt wasn’t a student there, I never would’ve applied for the job. I was really happy at Hofstra, having spent 21 years there, and we were just coming off this incredible season. I knew we were going to lose a bunch of great seniors, but we thought we had a formula going forward to keep building on the ’06 season. 

But with Matt being at Duke, it gave me some insights into the players and the families there. I’ll tell you, these kids were hurting for a long while, and I saw this as much more than a coaching opportunity. It was a chance to do good; it had nothing to do with wins or losses, strategies, or anything like that. It had to do with helping some young men get through a very difficult situation that was somewhat of their own doing, yet a lot not, and it was just a once-in-a-lifetime opportunity.

I had a conversation one evening with a family of a Duke player, and the father told me there was only one guy that these kids will play for next year. This was before anyone really knew whether the program was going to be reinstated or not. I naively said ‘who’s that’, and he went went ‘you!’ I remember being on my front porch in Farmingdale on this phone call, and that was when I really started to think about it. I thought ‘I had been on Long Island my whole life, this is my comfort zone, do I really want to step out of this? Do I want to put myself into the fray of whatever was going to happen with that situation?’ I talked to my wife and my son, and everyone said that it was worth trying.

In 2010, your fourth year at Duke, you finally win your first national title. What did it feel like to achieve that?

The one thing you realize at this level is that the quarterfinal game is still one of the hardest games to win, because everyone wants so badly to get to that Final Four weekend. If you take a look at our history in the Final Four weekend, you’ll see an incredible amount of one-goal games and overtime games. When the game was over, and the celebration was done on the field, I was walking off and through the tunnel back to the locker room and thought about all the great coaches who didn't get to experience that moment. I got to think about all the great guys I worked with at Hofstra and Post. I had this opportunity at a place where this moment was a little more possible, and I couldn’t help but think that there’s a lot of people that don’t get that chance, and how fortunate I really was.

You were named the head coach of the U.S. men’s national lacrosse team in 2015, and in 2018 you won a gold medal at the World Lacrosse Championship. What was it like to coach the national team and win a gold medal?

I wanted to see if what we taught at Duke and at Hofstra and Post could translate into coaching the best players in the country. I also wanted to get better as a coach; I wanted to be a better coach by being around these guys during this process. By being around some of the best players in the world, I was sure there was a lot that I could learn. When I started off at Hofstra as a part-time coach with a part-time staff, I was never interested in spending my extra time doing extra things like this because you didn’t have that time. Plus I was raising a family at the time, my wife was working full-time, but now it seemed like the right time to do this. When I had applied for the position and was accepted, I was really excited for the opportunity and very grateful.

In the lead-up to the World Championship, we would have these events every couple of months, and I got to spend time with Seth Tierney and [current Navy head coach and Hofstra alum] Joe Amplo, and if you spend any time in the same room as those two, all you do is laugh. Besides being terrific coaches and good people, they’re just really funny. And we would just laugh and have a great time, it helped us get on the same page. We also had Tony Resch with us, a Philly guy who went to Yale, was an All-American there and is now a high school coach and dean of students. This chemistry that we had with the staff was something that you looked forward to being around. Then with picking the team, we weren’t looking for the 23 best players; we were looking for the 23 players that fit our vision of being selfless, team-oriented, blue collar, hard-working guys. Players that would put the team above all. 

Playing in Israel was surreal. We would pinch ourselves every day ! We stayed in a kibbutz, we got to tour Jerusalem, we went to the Church of the Holy Sepulchre, it was the trip of a lifetime. These 23 guys were professional and they loved to be coached; we watched film, graded film, and gave grades to the team. We just coached the way you normally would a college team, for the most part, and then trusted them. In that last game with Rob Pannell, who is a terrific attackman, he has one point. But it was the one point at the end! There were a lot of guys that had stats that don’t normally show up in the stat book, but for coaches and people who know the game that’s a big deal; Paul Rabil probably had two or three secondary assists. It was a very selfless group of men who wanted to win a gold medal.

What does it mean to you to be a part of the Hofstra family?

To me, the greatest rewards in life are this family that you can say you’re a part of, because you share in the highs and lows with so many close people. When Joe Amplo and Kevin Warne were seniors, I remember the tears that they had on the last day. And it wasn’t because we lost to Johns Hopkins in front of 13,000 fans, it was because they knew that it was over. They’ll go on and get married, start families, become professionals, but that very special intimacy that you have with your teammates for four years can’t be duplicated. To be part of that at Hofstra was incredible; Jim Shuart, Bob Getchell, Harry Royle, Cindy Lewis, Dan Quinn, Raheem Morris, Joe Gardi, Kyle Flood, Dave Brock, Jay Wright, Tom Ryan… we were all in it together, and we did it because we loved what we did and where we were. 

What is one piece of advice you would give to a current Hofstra student-athlete?

How you behave in the classroom, in the weight room and the practice field, it all bleeds through together. You can’t be an average-effort student and a great athlete; you don’t have to be an A student, but be the best student you can be. You don’t have to be the strongest or the toughest in the weight room, but you have to give the best effort. You’ve got to give great effort at every practice and every drill; giving maximum effort is a lifestyle choice, and it will suit you for the rest of your life. Things aren’t always going to go your way, but you’ve got to be used to being that person to give everything they have.