The world of an assistant coach in collegiate athletics can be a difficult and thankless one. The hours are long and the season essentially lasts 12 months a year. A lot of your time is spent on the road, traveling with the team or making recruiting trips, sometimes out of the country. Turnover at these positions can be frequent, as coaches often decide that this world is not for them, or in some cases, they take different coaching jobs somewhere else.
But everybody on the inside, from the players to the administration to the diehard fans, knows that you can’t win if you don’t have great assistants.
Quinnipiac University has 21 varsity sports in all. They range from established, nationally-recognized programs like hockey and basketball to those in the NCAA’s designated “Emerging Sports” category, such as rugby or acrobatics and tumbling. And the assistant coaches of these programs wear many different hats. Their responsibilities can extend far beyond the field of play. They come from a variety of backgrounds, from age to tenure to experience level. Some have long-standing connections to the school; some are working in the Northeast for the first time. But they all have their own stories, their reasons for pursuing the path of a college coach, and the aspects of their job they enjoy the most.
Bradley Jacks: Growing with the Program
No sport at Quinnipiac has more coaches on staff than men’s basketball. Beyond head coach Tom Pecora, the program has an associate head coach, three assistants, a director of player development and operations, and a graduate assistant. This is standard operating procedure in college basketball, a revenue-generating sport where the coaches face a lot of pressure to be competitive within your conference. In this modern world, where basketball players are now allowed to transfer without penalty and over a third of all NCAA men’s basketball players have entered the portal this season, the pressure continues to grow for the coaches.
Bradley Jacks knows how quickly the landscape of college basketball is changing. He came to Hamden in 2019 as a graduate assistant under then-head coach Baker Dunleavy, following one year as an assistant coach at Division III Randolph-Macon College (Va.). After receiving his master’s degree in business administration from Quinnipiac, he was promoted to video coordinator before being elevated to a full-time assistant position in 2022. Dunleavy left for Villanova’s GM role after the 2022-23 season, but Jacks had developed a relationship with Dunleavy’s successor, Tom Pecora, during their time working together as assistants, and Jacks was retained following the coaching transition.
For Jacks, building relationships with the other coaches on staff has been key to his longevity at Quinnipiac.
“We’re all here to work toward a certain goal,” he says. “That’s first to help these kids grow through the game of basketball; second, watch them graduate; and third, win basketball games. Everyone that’s in this building is on the same mission, and everything we do is for the greater good of the team. My role as an assistant, it’s not my team, it’s the head coach’s team. The biggest thing is, how can I help make the head coach’s life easier?”
While Jacks does enjoy being on the sidelines during games, it’s at practice where he feels that the most fulfilling parts of his job are.
“Games are fun, the environment is awesome here, but practices are where we learn a lot about our guys and how well they handle adversity. That’s the part that makes being a basketball player fun. Seeing their competitive nature, being on the court every day, it really brings me back to the days when I played. I know how much they care, how much they want to be good.”
Emily Roskopf: Giving Back
Most college coaches would tell you that the relationships you build with your players extend far beyond their years as student-athletes, and at Quinnipiac that is no exception. A number of standout Bobcat athletes returned to Hamden some time after graduation to help mentor the next generation of Quinnipiac stars, including head baseball coach John Delaney and associate men’s hockey coach Joe Dumais.
Emily Roskopf represents the next generation of Quinnipiac athletes who have come back to help their alma mater continue to be successful. A four-time All-American and three-time national champion on the Bobcats’ rugby team, Roskopf is one of the program’s most decorated athletes. By the end of her collegiate career, she decided that coaching was a path she wanted to pursue, and in 2021 accepted the head coaching job for the new program at Division II Newberry College (S.C.), which she had to help build without any existing rugby infrastructure at the school.
In 2023, longtime Quinnipiac coach Becky Carlson reached out to Roskopf and asked her to apply for the recently-vacated assistant coaching job, and that brought the California native back to Connecticut. As she is the only assistant on Carlson’s staff, her schedule can get pretty hectic, especially during the season.
“I handle a lot of the more administrative side of things,” says Roskopf. “The week leading up to a game, whether it’s a home game or we’re traveling, I’m the one putting together the itinerary for the weekend. We have meals on the road, so I put all those orders in. We book the hotel, coordinate with the bus company, give the team the travel pack list. For home games, it’s similar, but we have to get the game balls ready to go, make sure the team has all the equipment they need.”
In addition, Roskopf handles emails from potential recruits, and has also taken on the responsibility of creating many of the team’s social media graphics.
There are only 12 women’s rugby teams in Division I. The community of people around the game is insular, but it is very close-knit. Roskopf believes that her background as a recent graduate of Quinnipiac makes her job a little bit easier.
“I know people on the other side of campus,” she says. “I know what to expect reaching out to admissions or student life from when I was a student here. The athletes come here because of the academic programs and the chance to play rugby, but they stay because of the relationships they build.”
Madison Skeie: Putting the Building Blocks Together
Madison Skeie always wanted to return to the Big East. A two-year captain of the field hockey team at Providence College, she worked as an assistant at Division III Johnson & Wales University (R.I.) and CAA school Monmouth before jumping at the chance to join new Quinnipiac head coach Nina Klein in 2023.
“Quinnipiac was always a school that I thought had everything they needed to win,” Skeie says. “I want to be a part of that process here.”
Keeping the exact same staff for multiple seasons is becoming increasingly rare in NCAA athletics, especially for a rebuilding program. But Klein, Skeie, and fellow assistant Abby Lucas will enter their third season together in the fall of 2025, which Skeie attributes to their relationship that extends well outside of practice and game hours.
“It’s important that I know what Nina needs,” Skeie says. “You have to have your head coach’s back, and the players have to see that you guys are all on the same page, all communicating the same things. You can disagree, but when you’re in front of the players you have to put on a united front.”
When asked about her favorite part of the job, Skeie doesn’t hesitate.
“The relationships formed with the girls,” she says. “Obviously, there’s a line, you’re still a coach, but I love giving them the confidence to be leaders and empowering women to go on and be great people when they leave Quinnipiac.”