11/26/2024
There is a joke amongst athletic directors that the acronym “AD” really stands for “All Duties” and there is perhaps no person in NEPSAC who has filled their plate with more duties than former Williston Northampton School Athletic Director Mark T. Conroy, the 2024 recipient of the NEPSAC Distinguished Service Award. Conroy retired in June of 2024 after 39 years of service that all began with a tap on the shoulder.
“It was about two minutes before a spring District 4 meeting started when Kathy Noble, who was the NEPSAC President and AD at Miss Porter’s at the time, approached me and asked if I would be willing to be the secretary of District 4 the following year,” Conroy recalls. “I said ‘Sure, Kathy’ and the rest was history.”
Conroy rose through the leadership ranks of NEPSAC’s District 4, eventually becoming the District President and sitting on the executive board. It was in this capacity that he came to know Bob Howe, who had just started in his role leading the department at Loomis Chaffee School. Howe, who currently serves as the Athletic Director at Deerfield Academy and a Co-Director of Championships at NEPSAC, nominated Conroy for this award and presented him with the award at the 2024 NEPSAC Annual Meeting in November.
“Mark exemplifies the quintessential New England prep school AD,” said Howe. “When I was just starting at Loomis Chaffee, Mark and I had so many talks about being an AD and contributing beyond our own campus. He’s been instrumental in how I have looked at my role as an Athletic Director in New England in addition to being a mentor to myself and many other ADs.”
Conroy’s arrival on campus at Williston was a homecoming of sorts. He spent his college days at Middlebury College in Vermont, where he met wife and fellow independent school educator Monique, and began his professional career as a History teacher and coach at Indian Mountain School in Lakeville, Connecticut. After three years, the Athletic Director position opened up, Conroy was tapped on the shoulder, and a 36-year career as an administrator was off and running.
After six years leading the department at IMS, Mark and Monique went west to the Webb Schools in Claremont, California where he spent six years leading the athletic department and football program. In 2000, the opportunity to succeed Rick Francis after his 42 years at Williston arose and the Conroys found the place they would call home for the next two plus decades.
“I stepped into Rick’s shoes in 2000 and essentially inherited his entire job: AD, football coach and thirds basketball coach!” Conroy recalls. “I coached football for 16 years at Williston, including a period of time where I was also the President of NEPSAC. Definitely the busiest time of my career, particularly with so much change happening in hockey and basketball.”
In his 16 years at the helm of the Wildcats football program, Williston posted an 84-47 record and appeared in NEPSAC Bowls on three occasions. Conroy was inducted into the NEPSAC Football Coaches Hall of Fame in 2019 and has been a namesake for one of NEPSAC’s Bowl games since 2018.
After serving as President of NEPSAC from 2008-10, Conroy shifted into a newly created role as the Director of Classifications which included much-needed overhauls to the boys’ ice hockey and boys’ basketball structures that have fundamentally changed the way those sports compete and have subsequently been applied to more sports across the conference. Those changes, as well as his oversight of the All-NEPSAC individual honors program are among the initiatives Conroy looks back on with the most pride as they enriched the student-athlete experience across New England.
“Having the experience I had at the time it just made sense,” Conroy recalls. “Working with individual coach association leadership, we were able to bring a measure of consistency of approach to the process of classification across all sports as well as establish a consistency to how we approached postseason individual recognition across all sports and coach associations – what are we going to call these classes? How are we going to determine the criteria for appointment or selection? And with the All-NEPSAC, [former St. George’s AD] John Mackay and I saw everyone was calling it something different, so to be able to bring everyone in NEPSAC together on those two projects, I am really proud of the work we did.”
More than anything though, he looks back on many years of committees, meetings, and phone calls building relationships with colleagues.
“I have had the chance to meet some great people and the collaboration across schools and leagues and regions was something that I really enjoyed and I always looked forward to getting off campus to the meetings,” Conroy said. “Being on the NEPSAC board and driving out to the meetings with colleagues like [former Suffield Academy AD] Dave Godin or his predecessor Dennis Kinne; Bob Howe up at Deerfield. It gives you some relationships away from campus that provide an incredible perspective of what is happening at other schools, not just what we might be facing at Williston.”
Howe valued those check-ins just as much as Conroy.
“I’ve never called Mark and not been greeted with positivity, a can-do attitude, and a thoughtful approach,” Howe said. “He has been the most open-armed and thoughtful colleague I could ask for and I know that’s true for many other ADs throughout New England.”
For now, Conroy is enjoying the relative quiet of retirement and opportunities to cross some items off his bucket list, including visits to Notre Dame and Green Bay’s Lambeau Field earlier this fall. He has also taken the opportunity to spend more time with Monique, his children Kristina and Kevin, and his granddaughter Noa.
“I don’t remember the last time I was able to sit on a couch on a Saturday and watch football, or hop in the car to go visit my kids during the school year,” Conroy said. “The flexibility and gift of time and retirement, overall, is going very well.”
Conroy is the second Williston Northampton Athletic Director to win the Distinguished Service Award, joining his predecessor Rick Francis who received the award in 1999.
ADDITIONAL LINKS:
Please view the awards ceremony here.
Please view the photo gallery here.
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