Brad Davis named new Mount Athletic Director

Steve Morano
MSMU Class of 2024

(9/2023) On June 12th, Mount St. Mary’s University named Brad Davis as the school’s new Athletic Director. This comes as the longtime Athletic Director of the Mount; Lynne Robinson announced her retirement at the end of the 2023 academic year. Davis is well-versed in college athletics and the NCAA, serving as the Athletic Director and Assistant Vice President for Athletics at Mercyhurst University for six years. While being on campus for only a little under a month, Davis has already shown his eagerness to pick back up where Robinson left off and lead the Mount in another season of MAAC sports.

Hailing originally from San Francisco, California, Davis is a product of Boston University, studying Broadcast Journalism as an undergrad. He then got his Masters in Sports Management from Southern New Hampshire University. He stayed in New England where, in 2006, he worked as Assistant Director of Sports Communication with former Northeastern Conference rival, Bryant University. Davis left there a year later and spent 11 years at Merrimack College, another NEC school, where he served as both the Assistant and Associate Athletic Director.

After 2018, he landed at Mercyhurst, where his story would continue until he was hired as the Athletic Director of the Mount in June of this year. He is not the only former Mercyhurst worker to come to the Mount this summer; Chris Ryan was hired as the Mount’s new head coach of lacrosse in July after the departure of former head coach, Tom Gravante. New hires are likely to follow this year as Davis and the rest of the Athletic department may want to freshen up for the upcoming MAAC season.

While at Merrimack, as Associate Athletic Director, Davis helped transition the school from Division II to Division I; while the move to the MAAC went smoothly for the Mount, there is still a lot of work to do for the Mount to update both facilities and technology to match the more established schools in the conference—and they already have. For instance, the sports information and media department have undertaken new technology and methods to perform media days for athletic teams. Baseball specifically has obtained trackman technology to better record data and analytics from practices and games and a flurry of new equipment and gear has reached teams at Mount.

While at Mercyhurst, Davis and the rest of the Athletic Department had to rebuild to be competitive in the PSAC, which is one of the best conferences in Division II. "I walked into a capital campaign for athletics—we raised about $15 million in about two years, and we redid every competition facility on campus," Davis said. Twenty-five varsity teams, including a football program and a Division I hockey, and all facilities were updated including a new softball facility and a complete redevelopment of their basketball arena. He also helped add to the population of the athletic student body, with the number of athletes at the school jumping from 550 athletes to above 700.

Those updates to the school’s athletic department and facilities transferred over to success. Mercyhurst won a Division II national championship in rowing and made five appearances for both the men’s basketball team and men’s lacrosse team in Division II national tournaments during his tenure. "I’m used to coming to an area with championship culture and supporting the student athletes’ experience through that, and I think much of that translates to what we are going to do here," Davis added.

But when did Davis hear about an opening at the Mount, and what did that process look like? Well, it starts with a search firm hired by the Mount specifically to look through a new athletic director. Davis has already had history with that certain firm interviewing for past jobs. "They reached out to me when this all started. It was on my birthday in April, coming back from hockey meetings in Florida." Getting of an airplane, Davis got a call from the search firm, explaining to him how awesome it could be and the opportunities the Mount could be in. Given a week to think about, Davis spent time digesting the idea and learning about it. But Davis had some experience with the Mount, playing against them in water polo and bowling while at Mercyhurst, so he did not have to dive as deeply into the Mount.

Davis added, "There were some similarities and people familiar with here [the Mount], Dan, the men’s basketball coach and I have a mutual friend in the head men’s basketball coach at Merrimack who I hired." Davis emphasized the ambition of the Mount to move up to the MAAC and perform at a higher level as well. "It’s an investment, and they don’t want to invest just to get by, but they want to invest at an above average level in the conference—that was really attractive to me." Davis went on to meet coaches and staff at the Mount, eventually working his way up to meeting with President Trainor and his cabinet before he was officially hired.

"This place is in a really good spot. Lynne did phenomenal job for four decades, so this isn’t something I have to come in and rebuild," Davis said. But there are some spots that the Mount must improve to not only perform at a high level, but also bring in profit for athletics. "It starts with revenue generation. We want to sell more tickets, we want to have more sponsorships, we want to raise more money from donors. And those things will allow us to improve our facilities, provide more resources for our student athletes, and just be more successful at the end of the day. College athletics is rapidly changing and while some of the realignment doesn’t affect the Mount, the resource game is real, and we need to keep up to be successful," Davis added.

The Mount is entering a new era, with both school and athletics. With the hiring of Davis and the final year of President Trainor’s tenure as president of the Mount coming this year, a new, even more prosperous era is coming to the school. And with that, the school is rending even more in the right direction for its success and future.