By Dan­ny Barletta
UConnHuskies.com
Octo­ber 4, 2019

The 2009 UConn foot­ball team cel­e­brates after their vic­to­ry in the PapaJohns.com Bowl. (Pho­to: UConn Athletics)

It’s been a full decade since UConn’s unfor­get­table 2009 foot­ball sea­son. It was a bit­ter­sweet sea­son which fea­tured some his­toric wins, heart­break­ing loss­es and the trag­ic mid­sea­son death of a teammate.

When the Huskies take on the USF Bulls this Sat­ur­day at Pratt and Whit­ney Sta­di­um at Rentschler Field, sev­er­al play­ers from that spe­cial team will be in atten­dance for their 10-year reunion. The play­ers return­ing include run­ning back Andre Dixon and kick­er Dave Teggart, both of whom were huge pieces to that team.

Teggart said the thing he remem­bers the most about that team was the amount of incred­i­ble tal­ent it had.

“We had a real­ly good group of guys,” Teggart said. “There are guys from that team that are still in the NFL … It’s crazy when you think about it, how many NFL ath­letes were on that one team.”

It’s true. Sev­er­al play­ers on that team spent extend­ed time in the NFL, includ­ing run­ning back Jor­dan Tod­man, defen­sive back Robert McClain, line­backer Sio Moore and wide receiv­er Mar­cus Easley. There are three play­ers from that team still cur­rent­ly play­ing in the NFL — Kansas City Chiefs full­back Antho­ny Sher­man, Atlanta Fal­cons cor­ner­back Bli­di Wreh-Wil­son and New York Jets tight end Ryan Griffin.

UConn fin­ished 8–5 that sea­son, but the five loss­es were by just a com­bined 15 points. The team was in a posi­tion where it could have won every game that season.

“That was crazy because no mat­ter who we lined up against, there wasn’t any kind of doubt,” Dixon said. “Every week we felt like, ‘Who­ev­er. Bring ‘em in. Line ‘em up.’ We were con­fi­dent. We didn’t care who was com­ing in, we were ready to rock. We knew we could win every game.”

The Huskies lost a heart­break­er 12–10 to No. 19 North Car­oli­na in Week 2, but they took care of busi­ness against oth­er teams and got off to a 4–2 start, capped off by a key 38–25 win over Big East rival Louisville on Oct. 17.

Just hours after that win, how­ev­er, an unthink­able tragedy struck that would change the course of the sea­son. Star cor­ner­back Jasper Howard was stabbed dur­ing an alter­ca­tion out­side the Stu­dent Union on cam­pus, and he died lat­er that night at the hos­pi­tal, leav­ing a void in the UConn sec­ondary but an even big­ger void in the hearts of the play­ers and coaches.

“I remem­ber going to West Vir­ginia the next week and it was like, ‘How are we going to play this game?’” Teggart said. “Everybody’s head was obvi­ous­ly some­where else. The recov­ery obvi­ous­ly took longer than just that year, but it was def­i­nite­ly some­thing that every­body ral­lied around and got behind.”

The Huskies had a new pur­pose to play for the rest of that sea­son, and Dixon said that brought the team even clos­er together.

“We all had each other’s back,” Dixon said. “We all car­ried each oth­er if we were down and out. It was a great team and fam­i­ly envi­ron­ment even before that, but the Jazz sit­u­a­tion gelled us clos­er even more. Such a bad sit­u­a­tion, but it kind of helped bring us together.”

After Howard’s death, the team would lose three straight one-pos­ses­sion games, two of them against ranked oppo­nents. Then on Nov. 21, the Huskies trav­eled to South Bend for their first-ever meet­ing with Notre Dame.

“I remem­ber our con­fi­dence,” Dixon said. “When we walked into that sta­di­um, every­body was like, ‘We’ve got what it takes to get it done.’ We ran out of the tun­nel with Jazz’s hel­met before the game. The ener­gy was crazy … We weren’t just play­ing against Notre Dame. We were play­ing for Jazz, and we were play­ing for the respect of our program.”

The pro­gram def­i­nite­ly earned respect in what was arguably the biggest win in UConn foot­ball his­to­ry. The Huskies won 33–30 in a dou­ble-over­time thriller. Dixon scored the game-win­ning touch­down, which he said was the most unfor­get­table moment of his foot­ball career.

“When I see a UConn fan or peo­ple from Con­necti­cut still today, 10 years lat­er, peo­ple still stop me and talk about that,” Dixon said. “They talk about how that was their great­est sport­ing event they have ever been to.”

That his­toric win sent the Huskies on a four-game win­ning streak to end their sea­son. Anoth­er key game was the reg­u­lar-sea­son finale against South Flori­da. UConn won that game 29–27 on a last-sec­ond 42-yard field goal from Teggart in the snow.

“It was the cul­mi­na­tion of the year,” Teggart said. “To end the year like that with every­thing that hap­pened, with the Jazz tragedy and every­thing. To hit that kick when everyone’s rely­ing on you, that’s what it’s all about.”

That kick would prove to be a fore­shad­ow­ing of the next sea­son, when Teggart once again hit a game-win­ning field goal against USF in the reg­u­lar-sea­son finale, this time to clinch the Big East cham­pi­onship and send the team to the Fies­ta Bowl. (Iron­i­cal­ly, the Huskies are play­ing USF this week­end for the reunion game too.)

The 2009 sea­son end­ed on a high note with a 20–7 win over South Car­oli­na in the PapaJohns.com Bowl, which was the third and most recent bowl vic­to­ry for UConn. 

“I thought that the Papa Johns Bowl was great because we showed we could play against a team from an elite con­fer­ence, with South Car­oli­na being from the SEC,” Dixon said. “For us to line up against them and get a win says some­thing about how we can play against any big team.”

Dixon was the MVP of that game with 126 rush­ing yards and a touch­down in what would be his final game at UConn. He said he ded­i­cat­ed that per­for­mance to Howard.

Ten years lat­er, both for­mer Huskies are excit­ed to be reunit­ed with some of their team­mates this weekend.

“I’m sure everybody’s gonna pick up right where we left off,” Teggart said. “I wouldn’t expect any­thing dif­fer­ent from this par­tic­u­lar group of guys. It’ll be great to see them.”

“The cama­raderie, the fam­i­ly, we all bled blue at one point,” Dixxon said. “I have mem­o­ries with every sin­gle one of those guys … Com­ing back and just shar­ing some of those sto­ries, some of those laughs, I think it’s going to be amaz­ing. What­ev­er the record is, I still have the same exact love for UConn foot­ball and for all my teammates.”

By Dan­ny Barletta
The Dai­ly Campus
Octo­ber 4, 2019

The UConn men’s hock­ey team start their sea­son this week­end with a matchup against Sacred Heart. They are hop­ing to have a bounce-back sea­son after strug­gling a bit last year. Pho­to by Eric Wang / The Dai­ly Campus.

The Ice Bus is get­ting fueled up and is almost ready to leave the sta­tion. The UConn men’s hock­ey sea­son gets under­way this Sat­ur­day when they trav­el to Bridge­port to take on Sacred Heart. Puck drop is set for 7 p.m.

This looks to be a bounce-back sea­son for the Huskies, who fin­ished ninth in Hock­ey East last year with a 12–20‑2 record. How­ev­er, they did fin­ish on a high note win­ning their last two games includ­ing an upset of the No. 2 team in the coun­try, UMass. Senior cap­tain Ben­jamin Free­man said that end­ing helped gain some momen­tum head­ing into this season.

“We know what our poten­tial real­ly was,” Free­man said. “So I think we just put in that extra work this sum­mer so we can solid­i­fy our poten­tial and make sure we’re work­ing hard.”

This is still a real­ly young team with 18 of the 26 play­ers on the ros­ter still under­class­men. How­ev­er, the fresh­men last year made up the bulk of the team, and now those play­ers are a year old­er and more experienced.

“I think the biggest jump guys make is from their fresh­man to sopho­more year,” head coach Mike Cavanaugh said last week. “It’s so hard when you have that fresh­man year. Everything’s so new … But now when you come back, you feel so much more comfortable.”

Sopho­mores expect­ed to have a huge impact for the Huskies this year include stand­out for­wards Rus­lan Iskhav­oc and Jon­ny Evans and goalie Tomas Vomacka. 

Vomac­ka, who burst onto the scene in the sec­ond half of last sea­son and played ter­rif­ic, has the poten­tial to be one of the top goalies in the con­fer­ence. Cavanaugh seemed real­ly impressed with his off­sea­son improve­ments, say­ing that Vomac­ka increased his ver­ti­cal jump by 12 inch­es which has helped his explo­sive­ness in net.

“It’s good to see some results,” Vomac­ka said. “I’ve been work­ing hard last sum­mer, this sum­mer, so it’s good to see some improvement.”

Even though there isn’t many upper­class­men on the team, the ones they do have will be key for this team. The lead­er­ship group of cap­tains Free­man and Wyatt New­pow­er and alter­nate cap­tains Alexan­der Payusov and Adam Karashik will have a huge role this season.

“I know they’re going to do a com­mend­able job lead­ing this team this year,” Cavanaugh said.

Sacred Heart is com­ing off a sea­son in which it went 16–17‑4 and lost in the Atlantic Hock­ey quar­ter­fi­nals to RIT. The Pio­neers have had the Huskies’ num­ber for a while now, as they have won the last six matchups dat­ing back to 2014. UConn will look to final­ly break the “Curse of Sacred Heart” this Sat­ur­day. The two teams may meet again lat­er this sea­son dur­ing the first-ever Con­necti­cut Ice Fes­ti­val in January.

The Huskies were picked in the pre­sea­son coach­es’ poll to fin­ish ninth in Hock­ey East and miss out on the tour­na­ment again. New­pow­er said that poll means nothing.

“It is what it is,” New­pow­er said. “It’s a pre­sea­son poll. It doesn’t dic­tate where we’re going to fin­ish at the end of the year, and quite frankly, it’s not all that impor­tant to us because at the end of the day, it’s how we’re going to step on the ice and play.”\

The road to prov­ing those coach­es wrong starts Saturday.

By Dan­ny Barletta
UConnHuskies.com
Sep­tem­ber 30, 2019

Jor­dan Hall, a trans­fer from Rut­gers, took a unique path to UConn. (Pho­to: Stephen Spade, UConn Athletics)

Jor­dan Hall has had a tremen­dous start to the sea­son for the UConn men’s soc­cer team, scor­ing eight goals through the team’s first sev­en games. His eight goals are tied for sec­ond in the coun­try, and they have rep­re­sent­ed the bulk of UConn’s offense so far this sea­son, which has just 11 goals total.

How did this kid from Eng­land wind up across the pond scor­ing goals at a tor­rid pace for UConn in his senior year? He took a path much less trav­eled, includ­ing stops in Mis­sis­sip­pi and New Jer­sey, but equal­ly as effective.

From the time Hall was grow­ing up in Old­ham, a sub­urb of Man­ches­ter, Eng­land, soc­cer was a huge part of his life. His father Stu­art was a huge soc­cer fan and used to take him to Leeds Unit­ed games when he was real­ly young. Hall said that it was then that he real­ly fell in love with the game.

Hall start­ed play­ing soc­cer at the age of five, and by sev­en, he was already prac­tic­ing with Man­ches­ter City, one of the top clubs in Eng­land. He had the tal­ent to be an elite soc­cer play­er, so he start­ed devot­ing near­ly all his time to the sport. He bounced around to a bunch of clubs over the next sev­er­al years, includ­ing Black­burn Rovers.

Then at age 15, he just quit. The game that Hall once loved had stopped being fun for him.

“I was just com­plete­ly burned out,” Hall said. “My main focus my whole life was always on soc­cer. Try­ing to go pro, try­ing to play at the next lev­el. I nev­er real­ly took any­thing else too seri­ous­ly… It was becom­ing more pres­sure and frus­tra­tion more than it was enjoy­able any­more, so I just kind of want­ed to give it a break.”

Hall bare­ly played after that, and the year before he came to Amer­i­ca, he didn’t play at all. It looked like his once-promis­ing soc­cer career was over.

How­ev­er, a month before the 2016 col­lege soc­cer sea­son, one of Hall’s good friends from home, Liam Eads­forth, decid­ed to come to the Unit­ed States to try and play. Hall agreed to go with him, admit­ting that he only went at first for the adven­ture, not for soc­cer. They wound up at Mis­sis­sip­pi Gulf Coast Com­mu­ni­ty Col­lege, which was the only place that would accept two new play­ers just a month before the season.

“It was a bit of a cul­ture shock,” Hall said when reflect­ing on his time there.

It was at that small junior col­lege in Perkin­ston, Mis­sis­sip­pi, that Hall’s love for soc­cer, as well as his career, was reborn.

“Once we start­ed com­pet­ing and I real­ized how the col­lege for­mat was and how com­pet­i­tive it was and how many peo­ple take it seri­ous­ly, I fell back in love with it,” Hall said. “I didn’t expect it to mean as much as it did to as many peo­ple as it did. It was a nice surprise.”

Hall played his two years at MGCCC like he nev­er missed a beat, rack­ing up 57 goals and 24 assists in just 35 games. He earned All-Amer­i­can hon­ors in both years, and was recruit­ed heav­i­ly out of junior college. 

He ulti­mate­ly decid­ed to play for Rut­gers and leg­endary coach Dan Donigan for his junior year. Hall led the Big 10 with 14 goals last sea­son and earned a spot on the All-Big 10 First Team. How­ev­er, when Donigan left Rut­gers at the end of last year, Hall decid­ed he would move on too.

“I didn’t real­ly want to be part of a rebuild­ing process for my senior year,” Hall said.

He said Donigan, who both played and coached at UConn, put him in con­tact with head coach Ray Reid, and UConn pur­sued him more than any oth­er school.

“We got on him right away and were able to con­vince him to come,” Reid said. “He’s a com­peti­tor who scores goals. He’s giv­en us a lit­tle bit of an edge.”

So Hall wound up here at UConn for his senior year, and he’s mak­ing a strong impact right away.

“Jordan’s def­i­nite­ly been a fan­tas­tic addi­tion to the team,” team­mate and room­mate Day­onn Har­ris said. “I real­ly wasn’t sure what kind of play­er we were get­ting in the spring, but he’s def­i­nite­ly lived up to all our expectations.”

The con­nec­tion between Hall and Har­ris has been spec­tac­u­lar so far this sea­son. Har­ris leads the coun­try with sev­en assists, and six of those have gone to Hall’s goals. Har­ris said Hall brings a dif­fer­ent dynam­ic to the team with his pres­ence in the box.

“He just brings the grit and the will­ing­ness to get inside the box,” Har­ris said. “His runs are just superb. He just makes great runs, and he makes my job eas­i­er to find him. I love play­ing with him.”

Reid said that being sur­round­ed by great play­ers like Har­ris has real­ly allowed Hall to thrive in Storrs so far. Hall agrees with that.

“I feel like I com­pli­ment Day­onn pret­ty well just because of how well he ser­vices,” Hall said. “I feel like I’m able to bring the best out of him and vice ver­sa. He brings the best out of me, so I think that helps.”

Hall actu­al­ly enrolled at UConn in the spring so he could start work­ing out with the team ear­li­er, and he said he thinks that helped his rela­tion­ship with his teammates.

“Obvi­ous­ly as an old­er guy, I want to have an influ­ence on the team,” Hall said. “But com­ing in you don’t want to try and dic­tate straight from the start, because you got­ta earn your team­mates’ respect… I think com­ing in the spring helped me get to know my team­mates and my team­mates get to know me. I think there’s a mutu­al respect there to where we lis­ten to each oth­er now.”

Hall is on his third school in four years. He said that has been dif­fi­cult because he’s nev­er been able to get com­fort­able some­where. On the oth­er hand though, he said it’s been cool to expe­ri­ence dif­fer­ent parts of the coun­try and dif­fer­ent cultures.

In all the places he’s been, Hall said he’s nev­er expe­ri­enced a fan­base like the one here.

“I love the atmos­phere,” Hall said. “Last year I didn’t real­ly have that. The crowds weren’t the same. I know we’re play­ing 45 min­utes off cam­pus, but we still have a whole Goal Patrol sec­tion. When you score, everyone’s like scream­ing. It’s nice. That’s one of my favorite things.”

Hall has got­ten to hear the crowd scream for him a lot already this sea­son due to his scor­ing prowess. He has adapt­ed very well to this team and is putting up big num­bers like he has every­where else he’s played.

Reid gave Hall a big com­pli­ment by com­par­ing his ear­ly pro­duc­tion to that of Darin Lewis when he trans­ferred to UConn in 1999. Lewis would go on to be a major con­trib­u­tor to the 2000 Nation­al Cham­pi­onship team, win­ning the Most Out­stand­ing Play­er Award for offense.

If Hall could help the team do some­thing sim­i­lar this year, he would go down in UConn soc­cer his­to­ry. At 3–4 right now though, Hall knows the team has to be bet­ter to get to that lev­el, even if that means him tak­ing a backseat.

“I think that it’s going to be impor­tant for every­one to play a part this sea­son for us to be suc­cess­ful,” Hall said. “I’d rather win games and not score than score and lose games.”

Even with his incred­i­ble stats, Hall still has a team-first men­tal­i­ty, which is exact­ly what you want from a play­er of his caliber. 

There’s a rea­son Jor­dan Hall is turn­ing into a house­hold name on cam­pus. His instincts on the field are some of the best you’ll see, and his stats are proof of that. The best thing about him though? He’s nev­er satisfied.

“I always feel like I have a point to prove every sin­gle game,” Hall said. “I think that helps me because I’m nev­er like 80 per­cent. I always feel like I have to give 100 percent.”

By Dan­ny Barletta
The Dai­ly Campus
Feb­ru­ary 28, 2019

Senior Jaime Fox encom­pass­es what it means to be a UConn women’s hock­ey play­er. Pho­to by Kevin Lindstrom/The Dai­ly Campus

By Dan­ny Barletta
The Dai­ly Campus
Sep­tem­ber 3, 2019

Sept. 1 Wom­en’s Soc­cer vs Col­gate game. Pho­to by Matthew Pickett/The Dai­ly Campus

By Dan­ny Barletta
The Dai­ly Campus
April 16, 2019

As head coach of the women’s hock­ey team, Chris Macken­zie has worked to reestab­lish a win­ning cul­ture in Storrs (Pho­to cour­tesy of UConn Athletics)

Some coach­es only care about their team’s record. It’s all about the wins and loss­es, the X’s and O’s and the per­for­mances on the field, ice or court.

For oth­er coach­es, like UConn women’s hock­ey coach Chris MacKen­zie, there are oth­er things that mat­ter more, such as cul­ture, team chem­istry and play­er devel­op­ment. MacKen­zie said that this mind­set has come with the years of expe­ri­ence he has in coaching.

“I would say ear­ly in my career, I was look­ing more at wins and loss­es,” MacKen­zie said in a per­son­al inter­view. “Just in the last few years, I’ve real­ly focused more on the cul­ture. The cul­ture piece is way more impor­tant to me than the actu­al results. I just real­ly think that once your cul­ture is set in place, the results will take care of themselves.”

That prob­a­bly explains why he stops to get the whole team ice cream if they sweep a series on the road. Or why he helped push a car out of a ditch on the side of the road in a snow­storm when the team was on its way up to Maine. He is cre­at­ing an atmos­phere for his play­ers to be able to suc­ceed on and off the ice.

His play­ers real­ly love play­ing for him too, and not just because of the ice cream. Junior for­ward Cather­ine Craw­ley said he was a big rea­son why she decid­ed to come to UConn and play.

“When he was recruit­ing me, his pas­sion and love for UConn real­ly drew me into the school,” Craw­ley said. “You can tell some­one loves their team and their job ver­sus when some­one sim­ply does a job for mon­ey, and Coach Mac absolute­ly loves com­ing to the rink every day. He also made me feel inspired that I could make an impact here at school.”

Sopho­more for­ward Savan­nah Bouzide said that his ener­gy and love for hock­ey make for an awe­some expe­ri­ence play­ing hock­ey at UConn.

“I love play­ing for Coach Mac, and I could­n’t imag­ine hav­ing any oth­er coach oth­er than him,” Bouzide said. “His love for the game is sec­ond to none, which makes play­ing for him so much more enjoy­able. His pos­i­tiv­i­ty and excite­ment makes me love com­ing to the rink everyday.”

MacKenzie’s love for hock­ey stretch­es back through most of his life, all the way to when he was grow­ing up in Nia­gara Falls, Ontario. He start­ed play­ing hock­ey at the age of 4, and some of his favorite child­hood mem­o­ries were when he would trav­el with his team­mates for hock­ey tournaments.

MacKen­zie grew up a huge New Jer­sey Dev­ils fan because his favorite play­er was “Mr. Dev­il” him­self, defense­man Ken Daneyko.

A good defense­man in his own right, MacKen­zie played col­lege hock­ey for Nia­gara Uni­ver­si­ty, where he was a four-year cap­tain and set school records for most goals, assists and points by a defenseman.

After col­lege, MacKen­zie played pro­fes­sion­al­ly for one year in Fin­land before going into coach­ing. He said he knew he want­ed to coach because in col­lege, both he and assis­tant coach Casey Han­dra­han worked at a hock­ey camp for 10 weeks in the sum­mer, and he real­ly loved teach­ing the game. Also, he said that he was inspired by his own coaches.

“I had great expe­ri­ences with the coach­es I had com­ing up, and I always thought I could do it,” MacKen­zie said. “Just see­ing, in my col­lege expe­ri­ence, how my coach­es there oper­at­ed, I real­ly liked it.”

MacKen­zie start­ed as an assis­tant coach for the UMass Low­ell men’s hock­ey team for eight years. Then, he went to his alma mater Nia­gara Uni­ver­si­ty to coach its women’s hock­ey team as a head coach for two years. Then, he spent one sea­son at Ohio State as the women’s hock­ey head coach before com­ing to UConn, where he has been the head coach for the past six seasons.

MacKen­zie said that UConn is a great place to coach and that he has found a home here.

“[UConn], hands down I think, respects female ath­letes on cam­pus beyond those oth­er schools that I’ve been at,” MacKen­zie said. “It real­ly val­ues what we bring to the depart­ment, acknowl­edges our suc­cess­es and sup­ports us through all challenges.”

While MacKen­zie tends to focus more on the team cul­ture and less on the results, the results have not been bad at all. He has coached to a 81–108-32 record in six sea­sons in Storrs, includ­ing the first two win­ning sea­sons for the pro­gram in this decade. He has led the team to the Hock­ey East Tour­na­ment in all six sea­sons, includ­ing an improb­a­ble run to the cham­pi­onship game in 2018, which he said was his favorite on-the-ice mem­o­ry of his time here so far.

MacKen­zie said the most reward­ing part of coach­ing is being a part of some­thing big­ger than him­self and hav­ing the oppor­tu­ni­ty to pos­i­tive­ly impact somebody’s life. Craw­ley said that he has cer­tain­ly done that for her.

“He has helped me improve my lev­el of play tremen­dous­ly since I came in as a fresh­man,” Craw­ley said. “As a per­son, I have learned more about myself and my strengths as a per­son than I have in my entire life since being at UConn. I’ve gained more con­fi­dence in myself and also learned how to use my own strengths to my advantage.”

MacKen­zie said that the biggest chal­lenge of coach­ing is being con­fi­dent while being flexible.

“You have to have a cer­tain lev­el of con­fi­dence in what you’re doing but a cer­tain lev­el of doubt in that you need to find the best way,” MacKen­zie said. “Not your way or any­one else’s way. Find the best way for your program.”

He prac­tices what he preach­es. Bouzide said that MacKen­zie always lis­tens to the play­ers’ input regard­ing how to pre­pare for cer­tain games. This fur­ther shows the tight-knit fam­i­ly cul­ture that he instills in his team.

MacKen­zie said that it is so impor­tant for him to have a bal­ance between work­ing hard and hav­ing fun, and to remain con­sis­tent on both fronts.

“We’re work­ing hard to achieve our goals but we’re going to have fun doing it,” MacKen­zie said. “I think we’re cre­at­ing an envi­ron­ment of growth.”

This envi­ron­ment is well-received by his play­ers, who seem to buy into his fam­i­ly-like culture.

“Coach Mac instills a cul­ture of hard-work and fam­i­ly,” Craw­ley said. “He has high expec­ta­tions for our team know­ing we can achieve any­thing because what you put in is what you get out. He gen­uine­ly cares about every one of us and goes out of his way to ensure we know that.”

MacKen­zie is able to get the most out of his play­ers because he cares about them and because he puts such an empha­sis on their indi­vid­ual growth. His men­tal­i­ty and approach to coach­ing gets his team good results on the ice but even bet­ter results off of it.

“If it’s an ear­ly morn­ing prac­tice or just a rough day for the team, we are always able to look to coach to give us that moti­va­tion to keep going,” Bouzide said. “His ener­gy is tru­ly contagious.”

When he’s not at the rink, MacKen­zie is spend­ing time with his fam­i­ly and get­ting involved with his own kids’ activ­i­ties, such as T‑ball for his son and horse rid­ing for his daugh­ter. Even when he is at work though, he said it doesn’t feel like work because he absolute­ly loves what he does.

“It beats a real job,” MacKen­zie said with a big smile.

By Dan­ny Barletta
Newswrit­ing II UConn
April 29. 2019

MANSFIELD- Joan Doiron, a res­i­dent of the town since 1978, spends all her week­days at the Mans­field Senior Cen­ter, usu­al­ly doing puz­zles, play­ing Wii Bowl­ing or singing in the chorus.

She said that she loves every­thing that the senior cen­ter offers and con­sid­ers the com­mu­ni­ty there to be part of her extend­ed family.

“Any­thing you can think of, this is the hub,” Doiron said. “This is where you want to come to, and this is where you want to get your con­nec­tions. This is where you want to meet peo­ple… It’s like a fam­i­ly atmos­phere, and it’s a great place.”

Joan Doiron enjoys doing puz­zles and oth­er activ­i­ties at the Mans­field Senior Cen­ter. Pho­to by Dan­ny Barletta

Doiron, 63, is part of a new­er gen­er­a­tion of seniors that expects more from their senior cen­ter, and senior cen­ters have had to evolve to accom­mo­date them. Senior cen­ters are very diverse com­mu­ni­ties, and they are becom­ing even more diverse with the arrival of a younger senior pop­u­la­tion, Mans­field Senior Cen­ter Super­vi­sor Sarah Tay­lor said.

“We’re see­ing a wider cross sec­tion of ages,” Tay­lor said. “It’s real­ly chal­leng­ing, but it’s real­ly neat and very unique to senior cen­ters that we can be serv­ing folks from their 50s on up through real­ly their 90s or to 100.”

The Mans­field Senior Cen­ter sits at 303 Maple Road and is open 8:30 a.m.- 4:30 p.m. Mon­day through Fri­day. It is open to both res­i­dents and non-res­i­dents age 55 and up. Pho­to by Dan­ny Barletta

The senior pop­u­la­tion will con­tin­ue to expand, espe­cial­ly in Con­necti­cut, which has the sixth-old­est pop­u­la­tion of any state in the coun­try, accord­ing to the US Cen­sus Bureau’s 2017 Amer­i­can Com­mu­ni­ty Sur­vey. Senior cen­ter lead­ers said they have to respond to this boom­ing pop­u­la­tion by hav­ing pro­grams and activ­i­ties for every­one in the age range that they serve.

Mary Flood, the new pro­gram coor­di­na­tor at the Mans­field Senior Cen­ter who spent 10 years as the direc­tor of the senior cen­ter in Port­land, Con­necti­cut, said that even as recent­ly as 10 years ago, senior cen­ters didn’t offer near­ly as many pro­grams as they do now, and the rea­son is the chang­ing wants and needs of seniors. Flood said that the changes real­ly start­ed to hap­pen when the Baby Boomers became seniors.

“I think that whole gen­er­a­tion who went through the Depres­sion and the war real­ly didn’t expect the town or any­body to do any­thing for them,” Flood said. “As the Baby Boomers are com­ing in, it’s a lot dif­fer­ent. They want ser­vices, and they want good ser­vices and they’re more active.”

The seniors now want pro­grams geared more toward bet­ter health and fit­ness, Flood said. The Mans­field cen­ter offers numer­ous fit­ness pro­grams that are very pop­u­lar, includ­ing tap danc­ing, tai chi and yoga.

The new­er group of seniors also wants more nutri­tious food options, which is some­thing that the cen­ter has been work­ing on in recent years.

“Peo­ple are very con­scious of what they eat,” Tay­lor said. “They’re look­ing for a high­er qual­i­ty food… Part of what we’ve done over the last year is real­ly expand­ed our nutri­tion pro­gram to include a bunch of dif­fer­ent options for that.”

These options include the “Fresh Fri­days” pro­gram, which start­ed in 2016 to give the seniors some home­made meals instead of the gener­ic hot lunch­es pro­vid­ed by a fed­er­al senior meal pro­gram. The newest ini­tia­tive for the senior cen­ter is to open its own cafe, called the “Maple Road Cafe,” which will be run by vol­un­teers. It will be open to the pub­lic to get cof­fee and dan­ish­es in the morn­ing and soups, sal­ads and sand­wich­es for lunch.

The future home of the “Maple Road Cafe” at the Mans­field Senior Cen­ter. Pho­to by Dan­ny Barletta

The cen­ter has also added many new trips. The cen­ter has its own van that takes the seniors any­where from local shop­ping trips to out-of-state day trips to New York or Massachusetts. 

The van trips are very con­ve­nient for the seniors who don’t have their own trans­porta­tion. For John Adam­cik, a res­i­dent of the near­by Wrights Vil­lage hous­ing com­plex who vol­un­teers in the kitchen at the senior cen­ter, the van is the biggest change he’s seen since he start­ed com­ing to the senior cen­ter in 2008.

“I don’t believe they had any­thing like that [the van] when I first came here,” Adam­cik said.

The cen­ter also recent­ly opened a new branch of the Mans­field Pub­lic Library right inside the cen­ter. It has its own col­lec­tion of books and a check­out sys­tem through which the seniors can reserve books from the main branch to pick up at the senior cen­ter as well. Since the town library is on the oth­er side of Mans­field, this pro­vides a more acces­si­ble option for the seniors who live nearby.

The new branch of the Mans­field Pub­lic library locat­ed inside the senior cen­ter. Pho­to by Dan­ny Barletta

Direc­tor of Human Ser­vices Pat Schnei­der, who has 30 years of expe­ri­ence work­ing in senior cen­ters, said that it is imper­a­tive for senior cen­ters to keep up with the times.

“In order to real­ly sur­vive, [senior cen­ters] have to con­tin­u­al­ly evolve, like any pro­gram, to the cur­rent pop­u­la­tion that they serve,” Schnei­der said. 

Tech­nol­o­gy has evolved in senior cen­ters. In pre­vi­ous years, there were com­put­er class­es in com­put­er labs to teach seniors how to use them. Now, com­put­ers and smart­phones have become so inte­grat­ed in soci­ety that the seniors, for the most part, know how to use them. Instead of labs and class­es, now there is one-on-one train­ing to teach seniors how to use cer­tain apps, such as Uber or Face­book, Schnei­der said.

“It’s not teach­ing the basic pro­grams and how to use a com­put­er any­more,” Schnei­der said. “It’s now how can you uti­lize tech­nol­o­gy to best improve your life.”

Vol­un­teer recep­tion­ist Bev­er­ly Gotch, who has been com­ing to the cen­ter for 12 years, said that the changes are all due to a ded­i­cat­ed staff, which she said is the best that she has seen. 

“We’ve had two or three dif­fer­ent direc­tors since I’ve been here, but we’ve hit the jack­pot with this one,” Gotch said. “She’s excep­tion­al. In fact, the whole paid staff is exceptional.”

Bev­er­ly Gotch has been work­ing at the front desk of the Mans­field Senior Cen­ter as a vol­un­teer recep­tion­ist for six years. Pho­to by Dan­ny Barletta

The mis­sion state­ment for the Mans­field Senior Cen­ter is “to pro­vide a wide vari­ety of pro­grams and ser­vices designed to meet the diverse and ever-chang­ing needs of seniors in our com­mu­ni­ty.” The cen­ter has been able to car­ry this mis­sion out by estab­lish­ing changes in mul­ti­ple areas.

Despite the rev­o­lu­tion­ary recent changes at the cen­ter, its orig­i­nal goal remains the same.

“We’re build­ing com­mu­ni­ty,” Tay­lor said. “We’re try­ing to pro­vide oppor­tu­ni­ties for folks to make con­nec­tions and live their fullest life that they can, at what­ev­er lev­el that is for them.”