MacGillivray and Day reunite, trying to turn La Salle around
PHILADELPHIA >> La Salle head women’s basketball coach Mountain MacGillivray and his associate head coach, Chris Day, laughed and joked like the old friends they are as they spoke Monday about the paths that led them both to 20th & Olney.
This pairing did not happen by chance.
The seeds were sown 30 years ago when they served as managers in the girls basketball program at Archbishop Carroll High School. MacGillivray, a
1991 grad, was a sophomore at the time. Day, who graduated a year later, was a freshman.
Day would videotape the games and MacGillivray did the play-by-play, among many other tasks. Those humble beginnings grew into separate coaching careers. Day quickly became one of the best high school athletes in Delaware County of the early
1990s, and went on to become the head women’s basketball coach at Widener and the University of Vermont, along with assistant coaching gigs for the girls team at Carroll and the women’s programs for Widener, Duquesne, La Salle, Saint Joseph’s, Indiana and Penn.
He also spent time as an assistant football coach at Widener and was the track coach for a year at West Chester East. MacGillivray served as an assistant at Carroll for 13 seasons before moving to assistant women’s coaching positions at Vermont, New Hampshire and Quinnipiac universities.
Regardless of where they were, however, MacGillivray and Day always stayed close.
“We prepared for a lot of teams over the phone together,” said MacGillivray, who played baseball for the Patriots.
“Yes we did,” added Day, an All-Delco standout in football and track during his scholastic career at Carroll. “We shared tons of ideas, how to guard people, what they had, recruiting, all that.”
Now they’re sharing those ideas together as part of the same staff. Although La Salle is off to a rocky start (0-5), it was a pairing that was meant to be.
It was Day who heard through the coaching grapevine that there was going to be an opening at La Salle last spring and the man who encouraged his best friend to go for the job. MacGillivray had just completed his ninth season as an assistant at Quinnipiac University in Hamden, Conn. and his third as the associate head coach.
The Bobcats were coming off their third MAAC title in four years and fourth trip to the NCAA Division I women’s tournament in six seasons, including a Sweet 16 run in 2017. MacGillivray had a great situation. He was comfortable, happy, coaching at a winning program and able to provide for his large family, which includes his wife Grace and their seven children.
“I had no interest in leaving a great program as an assistant just to be the head coach, so my name was on the marquee,” MacGillivray said.
He threw his hat into the ring, anyway.
“Coaching in the Big 5, bringing my family back to Philadelphia and being at a Catholic university, that was too much to pass up,” MacGillivray said. “It takes a lot just to put yourself out there to do it, just to go for the job. You have to stress out your head coach. You have to stress out your family and then you don’t get it, so I didn’t even know if I wanted to get involved. But the more I thought about those three things: Being in the Big 5, being back home and being at a Catholic university, I was like, ‘I have to do it.’”
MacGillivray applied for the job, with one condition.
“I said if I get it I want you,” MacGillivray said of Day. “Would you do it? How much would it take? We were negotiating the whole time.”
The offer came at an interesting time for Day. He had just finished his second season as the head coach at Vermont, albeit under a cloud.
In early April, Vermont athletic director Jeff Schulman confirmed television and published reports that the university was “Investigating certain aspects of the women’s basketball program.” Specifically the school was looking into Day’s ‘verbal interaction’ with the players, according to an unnamed source in the television report.
The investigation caught Day by surprise, but came to an end without a report when he tendered his resignation on April 26. Less than two weeks later Day joined MacGillivray as his associate head coach.
Day said the investigation was not the reason for his resignation. It was the opportunity to bring his family home and coach with his best friend.
“I can’t speak on everything,” said Day, who went 17-42 in his two seasons in Burlington. “The best way to phrase it is that there were a couple of curveballs that were thrown at me that were unexpected. It made me think, when Mountain got the job, is this meant to be? Is this going to be our final chance to ever come back home?”
Day had left Philly twice before only to return to his roots. He left Duquesne after a year to take an assistant coaching job at La Salle, which led to a sevenyear stint at Saint Joseph’s. He then went to Indiana only to return for a post at Penn, which led to the job at Vermont.
No matter where he was, though, his hometown area was always on his mind.
“I told many people that the only reason I would leave Vermont was to come back to Philly,” Day said.
And so, when the opportunity presented itself to return home for a third time, Day jumped at it.
“The biggest thing for me, at this point in my career, if I’m going to make a move to be a head coach or go somewhere else, coming home and working with someone who understands family is important,” Day said. “I have five kids. I have one in college and four younger. As you get older, it’s important to work with someone you know understands about family and (MacGillivray), with seven (children), understands that.”
MacGillivray and Day understand one another other and work well together. It dates to their days at Carroll when they served as managers, first under Linus McGinty and later Barry Kirsch.
“The behind-the-scenes meetings with Linus and Barry, oh my goodness,” Day said. “We learned so much from them … A lot of
our base is what we learned at Carroll, running the Loyola Marymount transition, that type of stuff.”
“They treated us more like assistant coaches than managers,” MacGillivray said. “We talked about basketball nonstop. They taught us the way they did things. They encouraged us to get in there and work with the players and help them out, so I can’t say enough about the opportunity that Linus gave us and that Barry gave me, specifically. That was huge.”
Now MacGillivary and Day are trying to use those lessons learned at Carroll, and many other stops along the way, to turn around an Explorers program that has had just one winning season (17-13 in 2016-17) in the last 11 years.
They know what it’s going to take to achieve that goal. “Patience,” they responded in unison.
Three decades ago they talked about coaching together on the collegiate level and now it’s a reality. It’s only fitting that it comes at La Salle, where both reached the pinnacle of their high school athletic careers.
As a senior, MacGillivray helped Carroll win the Catholic League baseball title at La Salle’s DeVincent Field. A year later, Day won the 100- and 200-meter dashes at the Catholic League championships at McCarthy Stadium.
Talk about karma.
“It was just a sign,” Day said. “Whatever was going on up there at Vermont and Mountain getting the job here, it was just crazy. The Lord spoke again. He keeps calling me home and we listened again. It was nothing that went down. It was just me saying, ‘OK, what’s happening is unfortunate. I could easily fight it and be fine.’ Nothing happened. There was no report.
“But it was like, ‘Why do all this and have this hanging over me? Are people going to be side-eying me? It was like I was being told to go home and coach with my best friend. The Lord spoke. I listened and here we are.”