Cross Country Coaches Marcotte and Villani on the “Sports Season”

In early 2020, both Holy Name and St. Peter-Marian announced to their students that the two would be merging. After years of rivalry, the two schools would become stronger together. The Cross-Country coaches from both schools sat down in an interview on the sport and how Covid has impacted their season. Mr. Nicholas Villani was the coach of St. Peter-Marian, and Mr. Gregory Marcotte was the coach of Holy Name.

Mr. Villani started coaching during the 2019-2020 school year, making this year his second. He sprinted through middle school but grew to love Cross-Country and eventually, coaching. Coach Villani loves to see the athletes improve over the course of the season. While Covid prevented a fall season, he is hopeful that the Cross-Country team can have some type of season in February.

One of the toughest things during the pandemic has been trying to find the motivation to stay active, according to Villani. Some of the things he would like to see like in the Cross-Country team is a positive energy and work ethic. Coach Villani is excited to be working with Coach Marcotte. The Coaches walked the course together at the beginning of the summer to get to know each other. After the meetup, Coach Villani was confident that their passion would help the two teams unite.

Mr. Marcotte started coaching a couple of years out of college. The first coaching job he had was at Clark University, coaching D3 as the head coach for the men's and women's teams. As his daughters grew, it allowed him to start coaching at Holy Name. According to Coach Marcotte, Cross-Country did so much for him personally and helped him to develop as a person. He wants to bring out the best in all the runners, and to create a new team culture, merging some of the histories from both schools. To Mr. Marcotte, the toughest part of coaching is realizing that every athlete needs something different. It could be in terms of training methods or motivation techniques, and they all bring something different to the team.

Mr. Marcotte loves watching people do what they think they couldn't do. He says it is true for teaching too: when a student takes on a challenge, and then the teacher watches them accomplish it. That's why he likes to coach and teach. Coach Marcotte didn't know Coach Villani that well, so he immediately reached out to him and suggested they meet. He knew right away that they would make a great team working together. Walking the course, Mr. Marcotte and Mr. Villani both seemed to have similar philosophies.

Mr. Marcotte knew that the two would complement each other and they would be stronger together.