The Boys of Fall | Getting to Know RL’s Fall Head Coaches—One, Two, and Three Years In by Erin E. Berg

Boys of Fall

Mike Tomaino Varsity Football

Bryan Dunn

Varsity Cross Country

Matt McDonald '85

Varsity Soccer

Getting to Know RL’s Fall Head Coaches—One, Two, and Three Years In

Interviews by Erin E. Berg

This fall, Roxbury Latin’s three varsity teams are led by individuals relatively new to their head coaching roles here, but certainly seasoned veterans in their respective sports. In the midst of their first, second, and third seasons respectively at the helm of RL’s soccer, cross country, and football programs are Matt McDonald ’85, Bryan Dunn, and Mike Tomaino. Matt McDonald returned to Roxbury Latin this year as Director of Admission and leads the soccer program. Dr. Bryan Dunn is in his second year as Dean of Faculty and Science Department Chair, and is head of cross country; and Mike Tomaino, head football coach, is in his third year as Director of Summer and Auxiliary Programs with a key role in both the school’s Health and Wellness program and Student Leadership program for Class I. Here all three coaches answer questions about a much-anticipated return to athletics, after a year disrupted by the COVID pandemic.

What is your own history with your sport, both as an athlete and as a coach?

Matt McDonald: I moved around a lot as a kid, but soccer was always a constant for me. I loved the sport and could play it anywhere. I’ve always enjoyed team sports—being part of a group, the games—but I’ve also always enjoyed the training, the practices, the road trips that come along with being a player, those bonding experiences that you have with one another. [Matt was captain of his RL varsity squad, playing mostly midfield.] That enthusiasm carried over for me as a coach. I began coaching with Paul [Sugg] right after college as his assistant, and—though the role was different—those shared moments were still very much a part of my experience. Coming back to independent schools in 2004, I really wanted to get involved in school life and work with students again. I’ve always found coaching to be a terrific way to do that. [Matt served as assistant varsity coach at both BB&N and Choate.]

Bryan Dunn: I started running sophomore year in high school to stay in shape for baseball. I was trying to get an edge, and my dad suggested running. A bunch of my friends were runners, so I trained with them on occasion, and then my dad bought me running shoes and I felt guilty if I didn’t use them! Sophomore year I joined cross country; I was second-to-last in the first race, and I hated it. But over the weeks, I saw that the work I was putting in was making me better. By the end of the season I was

in the top 10 on our team, and the hooks were in. I just wanted to run. My high school coach was really good—he understood the sport and developed us as individuals, but he also dealt with the mental side of it, teaching us to deal with anxiety and stress. And we had a good team. We were third in the country my junior year. In college [at William & Mary] I had two great coaches, and I continued running after college. What kept me excited all along was individual development: not What can I get out of this right now? or What are other people doing?, but rather How can I be better than I was six months ago? and What do I want out of it? Before coming to RL I was head varsity cross country coach at Xaverian, and I’ve also coached with a group called Emerging Elites during the summer.

Mike Tomaino: I played for four years at Gloucester High School and was part of a really successful program there. We were 50-2 in my four years and won two state championships. I went on to play at Bates College, where we had some success—we were one of the best classes since 1980 with a record winning percentage. Once I graduated, I coached at various colleges and universities— first at Bates, then at Union, then Bryant, and finally at Wake Forest. While I played receiver as a student, I’ve predominantly coached defense.

What do you enjoy most about coaching RL boys?

MM: RL boys want to learn, which makes them really fun to coach. There’s also a humility in the school’s culture—regardless of how accomplished they might be, students still approach things with a mindset of wanting to grow and learn. Not that this isn’t true in other schools, but I find it to be so consistently true at RL.

MT: RL boys are smart—they can grasp information easily. You can throw a lot at them, and a lot of it sticks. Their intuition on the field is an extension of that intelligence. They’re also tough, and physical, and they want to do well. They’re competitive in a way that’s not just all about wins and losses, but rather about being the best that they can be on the field.

BD: I appreciate that—while the ultimate performance is important—RL students tend to focus more on the notion that it’s going to take work, and they’re not afraid to put in the work. They realize that it’s the same as in the classroom: In order to be successful, you need to do a little bit every day, and try not to compare yourself to others, but rather acknowledge what you need to do to get better. With this specific group this year, they’re great at supporting one another, from the seniors to the Sixies. They know what each other is going through, what they’re putting in, and they want to be there for one another.

What do you see as the benefits to being both a coach and full-time faculty member?

BD: It’s so helpful to know the rhythms of the day, to know when things are stressful, on both fronts. As the coach, you obviously know when the big meets are, but then as a teacher, you know when kids are struggling with things during the day, and that you perhaps need to back off a little at practice. If I were a coach from the outside, I might just go straight to warm-ups—I wouldn’t have any context, about individual kids or about what happened at school that day. But here I have the benefit of finding a student between classes, just to check in and say, “Hey, how are you feeling? What did you do today? Do you need to do anything?” That access, and understanding, is invaluable.

MM: It provides the adult with the opportunity to get to know more than one facet of a student. Knowing students more holistically can be a conduit to helping them in an area where they may be struggling, helping them open up and feel comfortable in their own skin. Helping them develop a comfort level outside of the classroom allows trust to be built, which can then contribute to a student feeling more comfortable and confident in the classroom.

MT: Everyone is different in different parts of their life. How I am in school is different from how I am on the field. Similarly, how kids are in the classroom is different from how they are on the field. I think when you see people in different ways—with different challenges and different successes—you can form a closer connection with them. You understand them better. You’re more easily able to see and appreciate their strengths and weaknesses. And so, the relationship that we have on the field or in school— our relationships in general with our student athletes—is stronger because we see them in different ways.

Do you have a coaching philosophy, or an overarching approach you enlist as a coach?

BD: For me, coaching is similar to my approach in the classroom: Everyone is going to need something different, and you need to understand a person in order to know what he or she needs. I will coach and work with anyone who puts in the effort, regardless of how fast he is. Every kid comes to you with a different background, a different desire, a different set of abilities

and strengths and weaknesses. As a coach, I enjoy figuring out what those are and then matching kids with what they actually need. There’s no one-size-fits-all approach here. We may do similar things, but it’s all calibrated to what a kid actually needs. My ultimate goal is to have students graduate wanting to run beyond RL, and not to feel like the joy of it was beaten out of them. Running is something they can do their whole lives, so I try to give them the tools to eventually be able to train or run on their own.

MM: I believe that, fundamentally, coaching a sport— especially being part of a sport within a school setting— is educational. It’s about learning life lessons and life skills through the context of that pursuit. To me, that is fundamentally what I am doing: teaching boys resiliency, teamwork, how to deal with disappointments, how to win well, how to be empathetic, and how to push through challenging times or challenges in general. I think that’s always been the great part of sports.

MT: I try to instill belief in my players as much as possible— the belief that they’re good, and we’re good, because I truly believe it. Because we’re a smaller school, with a strong focus on academics, I think sometimes these boys don’t get the credit they deserve as athletes. So the approach that I’ve tried to take since I arrived at RL is just trying to get them to believe in their own skills, and strength, and success. I know how much the sport matters to the kids, I know how much hard work and time and effort they put in. I want them to believe in themselves as much as I believe in them.

What are your hopes for this season?

MM: My hope this season is the same as in any season that I’ve coached: that we are a significantly better team at the end of the season than we were at the beginning. If we have continued to grow and evolve, then I think it’s been a successful season.

BD: We always say the hope is to win the ISL, but that’s just on the victory/win-loss side. What I was really afraid of, with last year being my first year in the middle of the pandemic, was losing the team dynamic. We were in cohorts for cross country last year, so I didn’t see all the kids at the same time. I had heard from Chris Heaton and Nick Poles how good the team was together, and I was afraid that would be lost—not just from the running standpoint, but from the community standpoint. My big goal this season was to get that back. The captains George [Madison, Class I] and Mark [Henshon, Class I] have been instrumental in fostering that team dynamic and making sure that the whole team is involved in all the right ways.

MT: When you’re coming in as a new coach, and you’re trying to establish a way, the biggest transition is from year one to year two. Then last year—year two, for me—we didn’t have a season. So, if this is our year two, then it’s focused on re-establishing the beliefs and the core values and the culture that we want to have as a team, which are accountability, being players of high character, being consistent with our attitude and effort, and being confident, which goes back to the belief thing. Those are the four things that we stress. I try not to talk too much about wins and losses, because I think success there happens naturally when you have an established, positive, productive culture.

Do you have a pre-game ritual, either personally or for the team?

MT: Before every game, I lead a pre-game stretch, which the boys can count on and use the time to focus on the game ahead of us. I like to keep that consistency for the team. And then for me, I usually try to eat an apple. It’s something I always did as a player. I’m usually too nervous to really eat, and it’s just the right thing. I usually have some candy in my pocket, too, that I can munch on.

MM: I like to have a bit of alone time to gather my thoughts before a game, to think about how I want to approach a pregame conversation with the boys, and also to reflect on what we hope to accomplish. I like to come into school early and just take a little bit of time to myself to collect my thoughts in preparation for the contest.

BD: Before a race I think I get more nervous as a coach than when I ran myself, because I can’t control anything. But, for the team, we have a very detailed warm-up routine, which is the same each week. That helps to provide some structure, especially for the kids who are a little more anxious, so they know what to expect. My favorite part is about five or 10 minutes before the race, when all the boys get together as a big group. The other coaches and I don’t get in on that, but we can hear it. I love listening to what Mark and George are saying to the team. The chant they came up with is, on three they say RL, but on six they say family. I thought that was so interesting, that instead of choosing Let’s win!, or something, they chose family as their defining thing. I love that. //