Men's Soccer

By Chaz Scoggins, The Lowell Sun


LOWELL — He is everywhere in the world where there’s an important soccer match being played, yet he’s nowhere to be seen.

If you do see Marc Connolly, it’ll probably be at a UMass Lowell men’s soccer team practice or game. And then, poof! Like master criminal Kaiser Soze from “The Usual Suspects,” he’s gone again.

“Few people have gotten the opportunity to do what he does,” says UML soccer coach Ted Priestly with genuine admiration. “He has experience and access to the highest levels of soccer in the world, and I know there’s no one quite like him in college soccer.

“I know his schedule. He’s up at 4 a.m. to get to work and make his deadlines so he can make it to practice. He’s so well organized, he amazes me almost every day.”

What Marc Connolly does primarily is work for ESPN as the chief researcher for the network’s commentators on soccer telecasts, J.P. Dellacamera, John Harkes and Julie Foudy. He’s behind them in the broadcast booth, feeding them pertinent information as it’s needed throughout the match.

When ESPN and ABC telecast the Women’s World Cup last year, the network broadcast 18 matches in 36 days. That’s a lot of research to be done for a lot of international teams in a very short period of time.

“You can get by with English,” Connolly says over his cell phone while on the run at the airport in Columbus, Ohio, where ESPN was telecasting a Major League Soccer match between the Columbus Crew and New York Red Bull in a few hours. “But knowing Spanish does help. I don’t speak it that well, but I can understand it. Fortunately, John Harkes speaks excellent Spanish.”

So how does a kid who grew up playing soccer with Priestly at Westford Academy end up with such a job?

“I was a pretty good soccer player,” says Connolly, now 34. “But after high school, at least back then, there was no place to go afterward in that sport. I grew up reading The Sun, and from the time I was nine or 10 years old, I knew I wanted to be a sportswriter.”

After graduating from Westford Academy in 1992, Connolly enrolled at Ithaca College in upper New York state. It was one of the few schools in the country then that offered a degree program for sports information and communications.

A broken leg ended his soccer career, but he was a Dean’s List student and graduated in 1996.

“After college I was fortunate to be in the right place at the right time,” Connolly says. “On-line sites were just starting in those days, and ESPN.com was looking for young writers who were versatile and could cover a lot of different sports. I had interest in a lot of sports, and I kind of fit all their needs.

“I did that for five or six years, and even though soccer was my best sport, they weren’t doing much with it. When something big in soccer was happening though, they’d find me.”

As interest began to grow in soccer, Connolly’s star began to rise.

Even while his workload grew exponentially, Connolly still found time to coach soccer. While living in Connecticut he coached for the Oakwood Soccer Club in Glastonbury, guiding Under-15, -16, and -19 teams to the Connecticut State Cup.

Now living in Lowell — when he’s home, that is — Connolly coached the Stars of Massachusetts Under-16 boys team to the Massachusetts State Cup final last year.

And he hooked up with his old high school teammate, Priestly, again.

“I was in Foxboro to watch the U.S. team practice a couple of years ago, and I bumped into him,” Priestly recalls.

And so Connolly hooked on at UMass Lowell as Priestly’s assistant. This is his third year with the program.

“He’s a great evaluator of talent,” Priestly says, “and his scouting reports are very, very helpful.”

While globetrotting, Connolly often picks up on new innovations he can bring back to Lowell with him.

“I remember one time he called me to say: ‘You should see what FC Barcelona does the day before a game to prepare!’ ” Priestly laughs.

Recently, Connolly had a rare experience denied to most Americans: He got to visit Cuba for a World Cup qualifying game.

Squeezing the game in between Hurricanes Gustav and Ike, Connolly was fascinated by the island that has been off-limits to Americans for nearly 50 years.

“We were told not to buy anything and not to bring anything out with us. We weren’t tourists,” Connolly relates. “We were there to cover the game, that’s all.

“There were a few signs around with quotes from Castro and Che Guevara, and there were large pictures of both Hitler and Bush next to each other with the word ‘Assassins’ underneath in Spanish.

“But the four days we spent in Havana we were treated great,” Connolly continues. “People would come up to us and tell us how much they love America, and they hoped it would soon go back to the old days when Americans would vacation there.”

The ESPN crew got out just ahead of Hurricane Ike.

“The first hurricane had blown the roof off the soccer stadium,” Connolly says. “We left just ahead of Ike in 15-seat planes that looked like they were built around 1940. It didn’t make you feel comfortable.”

So how does Connolly maintain such a rigorous schedule?

“I don’t sleep a lot,” he admits. “And Ted knows it’s part of the deal. For example, I don’t attend Thursday practices because ESPN broadcasts a Major League Soccer match that night.
“And the producers at ESPN are great. They help me keep the whole jigsaw puzzle together.”
Connolly is single and understandably so.

“I hardly have time to do everything I do now, much less find time for a wife and kids,” he says. “But someday ...”