Familiar faces, new titles
MSC alum Leveille becomes athletic director; Lawrence staying on-board as senior AD
Mount shakes up top-tier positions in athletic dept.
WOONSOCKET – The same tandem that’s been overseeing the athletic department at Mount St. Charles for close to a decade will still be working side by side.
The only major change of note is that starting with the 2018-19 school year, Richard Lawrence and Ray Leveille will have new titles next to their names.
After nine years as associate athletic director, Leveille is getting bumped up to become the first full-time athletic director in Mount history. His predecessor Lawrence will be known as senior athletic director after serving as the longtime keeper of the Mountie sports flame. Next year will mark Lawrence’s 50th at MSC.
The news that Mount is shying away from the part-time AD route certainly qualifies as yet another progressive step under first-year president Alan Tenreiro. That Leveille was deemed the choice is the proverbial cherry on top of an ice cream sundae. Leveille graduated from the Catholic school in 2000 and has worn many coaching hats during his tenure at his alma mater, including the past four seasons as varsity girls’ basketball head coach.
“My heart has always been here. I can’t say enough good things about this place,” Leveille said one day last week while sitting in his office.
“I think it’s an exciting time to be a Mountie. The administration and the changes … we’re really trying to push athletics now and compete at the highest level possible and bring in the most qualified coaches.”
The move to the AD chair means that Leveille will no longer be in the classroom – he had been teaching technology. He’s also giving up his girls’ basketball coaching stripes in accordance with a longstanding practice that athletic directors have enough on their plate. He isn’t required to be at Mount when the school day begins at 7:45 a.m., but he’ll have to remain on campus at least until 6 p.m. each day in conjunction with overseeing the after-school program.
“There will probably be some days where I miss coaching,” Leveille said. “It just means that now I’ll be the number one fan on the sidelines.”
The seeds for a possible switch were planted in late March when Lawrence discussed with Leveille about dialing back his day-to-day workload at Mount. Some of the thinking revolved around Lawrence’s son Jake, who graduated from MSC earlier this month and is off to Assumption College this fall, where he’ll also play tennis.
The move to senior athletic director will free Lawrence up to make the drive to the Division II school located in Worcester and the neighboring colleges where Jake will compete. The elder Lawrence still plans to keep his same teaching load, which includes two Advanced Placement classes, and coach the Mount girls’ and boys’ tennis teams.
“I’ll still be doing a lot of the same things, but I’ll definitely have more space,” said Lawrence on Saturday night prior to the Mount boys’ volleyball team capturing the Division I state championship.
Lawrence was aware that eventually, Leveille was going to get the itch to seek different jobs. Lawrence also knew that if things broke correctly at Mount, there would be a very good chance that Leveille would stay put. As the spring season progressed, it became clear that Tenreiro was firmly in Leveille’s corner.
“He’s more than ready for this opportunity,” said Lawrence, who last week notified the Mount coaches via email that Leveille would take over as the primary overseer of MSC athletics.
Leveille has wasted little time in getting a jump-start on next year. The Mounties need several head coaches for the fall season, including varsity girls’ soccer. In an effort to widen the applicant pool, Leveille opted to post the openings on schoolspring.com, a practice already utilized by several area schools.
“Becoming a full-time athletic director will allow me to check out more practices and get to more off-site games,” Leveille said. “If there’s last-minute details to take care of such as inclement weather or cutting the grass, I’m there.”
Just like before, Leveille and Lawrence will go through the list of applicants before narrowing the field down to a few candidates to bring in for interviews. This time, the final call on who to hire belongs to Leveille.
“The only thing that really changes is that I’m now the decision maker. I get the final say on certain things,” Leveille said.
For Lawrence, that’s perfectly fine.
“We’ll continue to work together, but he’s the decision maker,” Lawrence said.