There’s a popular meme splattered all over the internet these days: “EAT. SLEEP. SPORTS. REPEAT.”
Those words pretty much sum up Mark Lepage’s childhood growing up in Avon, Conn., too.
Playing and watching sports took centerstage, and the real-life superheroes he looked up to were all players from the Red Sox, Celtics, and the Patriots.
“I’m no fair-weather fan,” said Lepage ’21 M’23, the recently promoted Assistant Director of Athletics, Internal Operations at NCAA D1 Stonehill College. “Going to Fenway, it’s like heaven to me. It’s a sanctuary.”
His loyalty to the Sox started with his first wide-eyed visit to the park when he was eight. Looking out over the Green Monster, Lepage imagined a grownup version of himself sitting in the broadcaster’s booth, narrating a walk-off win or a famous player’s jersey getting retired.
From then on, he could be found in front of his family room TV during games or on the sidelines of local little league playoffs, where he would practice announcing innings with a booming voice.
He knew that sports were the key to his future career and the life he wanted.
By high school, he was sure he’d pursue either coaching or the business side of sports and began exploring colleges with a sport management degree. He toured eight colleges up and down New England; Endicott was the sixth he visited.
“Everyone talks about how you just find your school, and that’s the one. But before that moment happens, there’s a lot of anxiety about whether you’ll ever have that feeling,” he said.
When he pulled up to College Hall, Lepage knew that Endicott was the right place.
From the beginning, sports defined his Endicott experience both academically and socially.
Within the first week of classes, Lepage competed in an epic dodgeball game against the football team. Intramural sports were where he found friends. His sport management coursework cross-applied to his first two internships perfectly. First, he dove into learning the ins and outs of coaching with a semi-pro football team back home. Next, a summer with the Bristol Blues 亚洲色吧 team gave him experience with game day operations, concessions, and facilities management.
Then the pandemic hit junior year, and the sports world essentially stopped. Lepage was striking out finding a senior internship. Even more disconcerting was that job opportunities for recent graduates in his field were scarce.
He knew about the importance of flexibility in a fitness setting but had never been stretched like this in real life.
Luckily, Endicott’s Department of Athletics needed help, and Lepage was hired to intern at Rec Sports with the Intramurals and Recreational Sports program. Later that spring, he completed his coaching certification while working as the Student Analyst for Endicott’s 亚洲色吧 program, which allowed him to continue gaining experience and building more connections with people in the athletic department.
After graduating, he was accepted into the M.S. in sport leadership, an asynchronous 39-credit program with a total focus on sport management and administration, and also landed a full-time Intramurals and Gameday Management Graduate Assistant position within Endicott’s Athletic Department.
This position allowed Lepage to experience all aspects of an athletic department and grow across multiple areas, from running intramural leagues and varsity games to promoting new intramural offerings across campus. His top experience from that time was helping launch presale online tickets through Eventbrite for the 2023 NCAA Division III Frozen Four Men’s Ice Hockey tournament.
With the M.S. in sports leadership curriculum, Lepage pushed himself to diversify his industry knowledge by taking courses in NCAA compliance, fundraising, financial resource management, sports event marketing, and management. The course models focused on real-world applications through case studies and projects rather than textbook-driven learning methods, which helped to better prepare him for a full-time job in the sports industry.
“The best part of the M.S. was the faculty,” Lepage said. “Many of them are also working in the industry, and they want to help you connect.”
When it came time to apply for jobs, they were all in his corner—especially Anthony D’Onofrio, Director of Graduate Sport Leadership; Dr. Brian Wylie, Assistant Vice President and Director of Athletics; and Mark “Kula” Kulakowski, Associate Director of Athletics, who went to bat for him as references when he was interviewing for positions.
Lepage couldn’t believe that less than two weeks after Commencement, he had landed a “dream job” at Stonehill College as Assistant Director, Recreation & Athletic Programs. “We have 18 club sports on campus, intramurals, and group exercise activities. I was running all of them plus the home event management for varsity games at Stonehill,” he said.
It would have been a daunting learning curve except that he had prior experience managing many of the same programs from his internships and Graduate Assistant roles at Endicott.
One year later, he was promoted to Assistant Athletic Director for Internal Operations and is now fully involved on the varsity side, handling facility scheduling for Stonehill’s 23 varsity programs, as well as serving as the athletic liaison to Residence Life and the dining provider on campus.
“I learned how sometimes in life you just have to be flexible,” Lepage reflected. “I hadn’t planned on pursuing graduate studies until five or 10 years down the road, but honestly, it all worked out better than I could have planned.”