By: Hannah Wiley, Assistant Features Editor
Last spring, the Canisius community welcomed the newest coach in the Canisius athletic program, Women’s Basketball Head Coach Tiffany Swoffard!
Coach Swoffard attended Austin Peay State University in Clarksville, Tennessee from 1998-2002, where she got her undergraduate degree in business with a concentration in marketing. While there, she was a member of the women’s basketball team and AKPsi Business Fraternity. She also got her MBA from Rowan University in 2006-2007. At Rowan, Coach Swoffard started out her coaching career as a GA coach where she assisted in sports administration like running practices, recruiting, and game-plans. After graduating, she continued on to be the recruiting coordinator and assistant coach at the University of Arkansas from 2007-2010.
Next, she started her tenure as an assistant coach and Recruiting Coordinator at Mercer University from 2010-2015, where the coach she played for at Austin Peay, Susie Gardner, was the current head coach. “I believed in her, and got to see firsthand how she turned around Austin Peay, because we weren’t very good prior to her being there,” Swoffard said about Gardner. “I wanted to learn, or continue to learn, from her.”
Coach Swoffard then went to the University of Toledo in 2015 and worked with Tricia Collup who is now the head coach at Miami University. Toledo had not been to the NCAA championship in 10 years, but they made it in during Swoffard’s second season with the team in 2017! From 2019-2023 she was at Miami University of Ohio as an assistant coach where she said she had “the opportunity to recruit and develop a lot of really talented kids.” Last season, Coach Swoffard was at Penn State University with Carolyn Keeger and it was their first 21 season since 2017 and their first postseason play. “I’ve been really fortunate to work for really, really, really smart, skilled head coaches,” Swoffard said.
Post-undergrad, she spent the first three years working in the business world where she said “we talk about what it looks like to build a healthy team, being able to have different lenses, a different perspective to refer to.” Coach Swoffard also credits how she is as a coach even off the court, to her family. The things that her mom, dad and step-parents emphasized growing up really helped her become the person she is today. “I think their perspective has shaped who I am, and they have an opportunity to be a part of different communities, whether it be through volunteering or working; but just being able to build relationships with different types of people,” Swoffard said.
Going into the season, Coach Swoffard really wants to focus on the team's core values. The team puts a habitual focus on the “C’s”, how they connect, communicate and compete, their consistency and their compassion. “It’s not just our team, because a team is a community within a community,” Swoffard said. The team talks about these virtues everyday. Coach Swoffard always tells her team, “how you do anything is how you do everything.” She wants to consistently see how the team as a whole can add value to the community, not just Canisius but the city of Buffalo. “We’re going to participate, and we hope that will inspire other people to want to come and support us and be part of what it is that we are building,” Swoffard said.
While these virtues might not translate to wins on the court this season (even though we hope they do), Coach Swoffard is focused on building a championship-caliber program like she’s done for so many teams in the past. They know that as a program part of this focus includes attention to the community around them; Coach Swoffard emphasizes not only showing up at practice, but also in the classroom and with family and friends to continue to build good habits.
Coach Swoffard is determined to build the team up again; to build a team that wins championships. On and off the court, Coach Swoffard is encouraging, welcoming and ready to be a Griff.
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