By: Colton Pankiewicz, Sports Editor
Canisius held an opening press conference on Wednesday to introduce Tiffany Swoffard as head coach of the women's basketball team.
During the presser, President Steve Stoute and Associate Athletic Director Matt Reitnour spoke before Athletic Director Bill Maher all took to the podium.
Maher said that he was impressed with Swoffard’s energy and passion to build teams. During the interviewing process, Maher explained, Swoffard demonstrated to him how her network would be successful in building a winning team and her familiarity with recruiting in the northeast and midwest.
Tiffany Swoffard said that she was on a walk while actively recruiting in her role assistant coach with Penn State’s women's basketball program when Bill Maher, Canisius’s athletic director, gave her the call, offering her the job as the head coach of Canisius women’s basketball. At the podium, Swoffard explained what it was that drew her to Canisius. “It was important for me to find an institution that shared a holistic approach to the student experience.” She continued, “For me personally, I am going to go into the homes of young women and tell and [assure] their parents that their daughters are going to achieve a degree that is meaningful — then the academic rigor has to be able to substantiate and I found that at Canisius.”
In terms of the work she's done early on campus, Swoffard said she spent last weekend on a recruiting trip in Pennsylvania, Ohio and Tennessee and has talked to 30 to 40 athletes currently in the transfer portal. Having worked alongside former Canisius head coach Sahar Nuesseibeh, the new head women's basketball coach said that it’s about “continuing what Sahar established.” Freshman Mary Copple, who saw limited time in her first year with the team, is someone that Swoffard highlighted heading into the upcoming season. “I’m extremely excited about [Copple’s] development. I’m excited to see her flourish as a point guard and a leader.” Starting a new chapter at Canisius, Swoffard is hoping to build a “blue-collar, gold standard,” and to get to that point you have to recruit those characteristics. “My culture is built on the ‘sees’ and the things you can't see.”
After most of last season’s coaching staff followed Nusseibeh to Eastern Michigan, Swoffard says that she expects to have a full staff in the coming days. She and her staff have work to do with May 15 being the National Letter of Intent’s deadline and the amount of players diminishing from the portal with each passing day.