PRINCETON: New PU AD diving into role

Marcoux is transitioning quickly

By Justin Feil, Assistant Sports Editor
   Mollie Marcoux’s first official month on the job has made life a bit hectic, and the new Princeton University Director of Athletics wouldn’t have it any other way.
   ”It’s been very busy transitioning the family down here on top of a busy work schedule,” said Marcoux, who is married with three children. “Working at Chelsea Piers and the way I’ve approached working, if you’re not working, you’re not working. You have to plug through. It doesn’t feel unusually crazy or hectic. I’ve enjoyed work and intense work where you have to work together to get things done.”
   Marcoux has always been a busy body at Princeton. As an undergraduate, she played two sports and lettered in ice hockey and soccer four times each, and she graduated cum laude in 1991 with a history degree. Now, instead of being an athlete, she is helping to shape the experiences of Princeton’s athletes as the athletic director.
   ”It’s completely different,” Marcoux said. “I had no idea all this work was going on.”
   Marcoux was named the successor of Gary Walters, who remains on in an advisory role, in April. While she didn’t officially take over until the beginning of August, she has been preparing since April to move into her new post after 19 years with Chelsea Piers Management.
   ”I knew a lot,” Marcoux said. “We made the announcement on April 15. I was still working at Chelsea Piers until June 15. I was doing double time and trying to wrap up all the things I cared about so much at Chelsea Piers and learning what was going on here and learning from Gary.
   ”I was working pretty much every day. It wasn’t a vacation time. There’s so much to learn and so much to know, the first day felt like a relief to fully concentrate and dig in.”
   While Marcoux can identify after having been a two-sport athlete at Princeton and has followed Princeton athletics since graduation, she is adjusting to being on the management side. Her first month, she started to establish connections within athletics.
   ”I think the most important thing for me is to get to know the people on my team,” Marcoux said. “We went out pretty aggressively scheduling meetings with every coach, every head coach. The first two weeks I met with almost of them, except a few that were on vacation. As of (Wednesday), I will have met with all 34 head coaches. I had long and strategic talks with the head coaches, getting to know their programs, their philosophies, their teams.”
   On top of meeting all of the coaches that make up the PU athletics family, Marcoux has also been starting to work on shaping her role.
   ”I spent a great deal of time with the administration team, with the senior associate athletic directors,” Marcoux said. “That’s been the core. Then, there have been any number of things that have happened on a daily basis. We’ve had strategy, analysis, putting out fires. It’s a complex organization.
   ”The best thing about it is the people that work in the department are amazing people. Gary had amazing people. That’s what made it so fun. That’s the beauty of this. It’s a little different than other situations. It’s a solid base. It’s not a terrible situation that needs to be fixed. It’s a very well run organization and tremendously successful place. My job is to drill down that base and make a few little things better.”
   Marcoux is determined to build on a motto started under Walters, “Education Through Athletics,” while also overseeing an athletic department that remains highly successful.
   Said Marcoux: “We have an unmatched tradition of excellence. We want to teach our students through athletics, but at the end of the day we want to win. Everything we do, we want to do well.”
   Marcoux has experienced success at every stop she’s had since Princeton. She experienced plenty of success in her athletic career at Princeton. She still holds the ice hockey team’s single-season goals record with 35. After graduation, she was assistant athletic director, assistant dean of admissions, assistant housemaster and coach of the girls ice hockey and soccer teams at the Lawrenceville School. When she left, the Mollie Marcoux Award was created to recognize the most balanced female hockey player athletically and academically. At Chelsea Piers, she climbed the corporate ladder quickly, founded a scholarship fund and created sports programming. Now, she is trying to leave her mark at Princeton.
   ”I’m diving into all aspects of the department and seeing what areas need some more growth,” Marcoux said. “There are things people were working on already.
   ”It’s not that different (from her previous positions). It’s basically taking a complex organization and breaking it down to the smaller parts to get things accomplished. I’ve been around sports my whole life. The people are driven and competitive. I’ve been able to work in multiple sports environments. It’s more similar than I thought it would be. It’s helping those that work for you and with you to be as good as they can be. I’ve found a lot of synergies.
   ”Working for a university that’s a complex organization is different than a smaller company. There are different protocols and procedures. They make sense, and I’m learning them.”
   Marcoux will watch her first game as acting AD tonight when the Princeton women’s soccer team hosts Rutgers on Myslik Field in Roberts Stadium. Marcoux recalls fondly her own playing days with the Tigers, and now is in a position to ensure that student-athletes get as much out of their time at Princeton as she did.
   ”I think that’s the beauty of our mission,” Marcoux said. “We have a clear sense of core values. We care a lot about the student-athlete experience. If you keep that at heart, you say they’re great students and great athletes. Always balancing the two is what our coaches believe in, that our kids can do really well at both. And on top of that, we want them to be good citizens, locally, nationally, worldly. So we’re asking a lot of them. They’re so talented that we think they can do it. The kids are really high achievers and high level athletes. They’re succeeding at a high level.”
   Marcoux will do all that she can to promote Princeton’s student-athletes coming out on top in a world that she sees as even more competitive than when she played.
   ”The kids are performing at a really high level,” Marcoux said. “Not that there weren’t athletes performing at a high level, but they are doing a lot of impressive stuff now. They have a lot of competition. They’re achieving, which is great.”
   Marcoux has always kept an eye on Princeton athletics from afar since graduation. Now she is back, up close and behind the scenes in steering the athletics program at the school that helped to foster her career and her passions.
   ”It’s been fantastic,” Marcoux said. “I feel like I’ve been here forever.”