Lights, Camera, Action: Game Day

His stage is set. The props –band members, cheerleaders, dancers, a mascot, a national anthem singer- are in place. After weeks of rehearsals, the curtain is ready to be lifted and his performance is about to begin.

Homecoming is here. It’s game day.  Headset on.

Here come the fans.  More than 5,500 of them have gathered to witness his fourth-ever show at Kenneth P. LaValle Stadium.  Heading to their seats they catch a glimpse of a life-sized Seawolf dashing through the end zone hoisting a red eight by ten foot S.B. flag in front of the student section.  The first half finishes with the visiting Charleston Southern leading by three points. 

No intermission. 

As the fans walk to the concession stands to buy a hotdog, notes from the marching band’s rendition of “September” by Earth, Wind, and Fire fill the air.  Their excitement is building.  The DJ plays “Welcome to the Jungle” over the sound system to start the second half.  With barely a minute left in the fourth quarter the home team takes a 20-19 lead on a 23-yard touchdown pass.  Cue the replay.  Suddenly their eyes flash to the Jumbo-Tron where they watch the wide receiver’s catch in the middle of the end zone.  The clock strikes 00:00.  The victory is secure and a combination of thunderous applause and “New York, New York” notes erupt from the stadium.

The last fan exits and the curtain closes.  Finally, John VanWagner gets to take a breath.  Headset off.

For Stony Brook University, whose Division I athletic program is less than a decade old, making the football and basketball teams look good on game day is an important component of building a winning culture.  This was especially true after 2005-2006 when the school’s Athletic Director, Jim Fiore, worked out the first television deal in school history, a multi-year agreement with Madison Square Garden (MSG) Network to broadcast Seawolves athletics. 

With the signing of this deal Stony Brook had found its audience.  Now it needed a director to keep them entertained. 

Three years later, as the university’s football program was set to begin it’s first season as a member of the Big South Conference and the men’s basketball program was on the verge of more than doubling its win total from the previous season, VanWagner was hired to fill the game day director’s chair and help Fiore revamp the culture of Stony Brook athletics.

Less than a year later, VanWagner’s ideas, like working out an agreement to host pre-basketball game events at the University Café, and efforts, like writing and editing 20-page game day performance scripts for every home football and basketball game, has earned him the title of “the maestro” by Fiore and other members of the athletics faculty.   

Since joining Stony Brook athletics on July 1, 2008 as the manager of marketing and corporate sales, VanWagner has taken on the challenge of not only running game day operations, but also of helping to educate the campus and local communities about the university’s sports teams. When “the maestro” isn’t writing out performance scripts or coordinating with 15 different departments on his headset and radio during game days, he spends part of his time contributing ideas to the school’s Spirit and Pride Committee.

While most former high school “jocks” would find wearing a headset instead of a helmet during a game unfulfilling, most people who fall into this category wouldn’t spend the winter vacation of their sophomore year of college as a practice player for their university’s women's basketball team.

Sports are in VanWagner’s blood. Being born to parents who were both Olympic trial swimmers, he began swimming when he was four years old. “I wasn’t pushed in. I dove in,” he recalls about his early experiences in the pool and with sports in general.  And that’s how it’s been ever since.

After transferring from a public high school to the private Trinity-Pawling School prior to beginning eleventh grade, VanWagner became a five-sport athlete, participating in basketball, football, baseball, golf and swimming.  He was a team captain of the first three. 

At 5’11’’ VanWagner was the starting point guard on his varsity basketball team where he directed his teammates and acted as an extension of his coach on the court.  Even though VanWagner was usually the shortest player on the court- his team’s shooting guard was 6’4’’ and it’s center was 6’9’’- he earned his playing time by being a “hustle guy” and “managing the game.”

Now, with his high school days firmly behind him, VanWagner’s reassumed his point guard role except this time his teammates are the university’s band, mascot and dance team and his coach is a 26,000-person university.

After graduating from Trinity-Pawling VanWagner spent his next four years at Marist College, where his father, Larry, has been the head men’s and women’s swim coach for the last 32 years.  VanWagner entertained the idea of walking on to the men’s basketball team, but in the end the “physical limitations” that he overcame in high school proved to be too much for him at the collegiate level.  Yet, even with this realization in mind he plunged into the school’s athletic program. 

“I loved the emotion and atmosphere of the sport so I did the next best thing that was natural to me,” VanWagner said.  “I followed a career in support staff of college athletics.”

Before taking notes in his first collegiate class, VanWagner had already taken notes on the substitutes and ball spots in the football team’s opening game of the season.  From there he went on to dabble in multiple aspects of athletics including event planning, working regional March Madness games and announcing the play-by-play activity at the Metro Atlantic Athletic Conference softball tournament.  When his time at Marist was over, VanWagner left with a bachelor's degree in Public Relations and Communication Studies, a minor in Psychology and a complete transformation from someone who partakes in competitive athletics to someone who helps direct them.

For the next few years VanWagner found himself involved with game day and marketing operations at Madison Square Garden, first as a sports properties and network public relations intern and then as a graduate assistant for Athletic Marketing at St. John’s University.  Before helping to organize the off-court activities for Red Storm basketball games, VanWagner had game day experience with everything from the Knicks and Liberty to the Westminster Kennel Club Dog Show and sumo wrestling. 

As he honed his professional skills, VanWagner simultaneously became a part of an afterhours Garden culture.  Once it passed 11:00pm and the 19,763 seats had emptied “the people with the passes were given free reign” over the grounds. For VanWagner and the other offstage crewmembers the pickup games and shoot-arounds served as a bridge between their current and past relationship with sports.  

With his five-sport days behind him and his MBA almost within his grasp, VanWagner realized that there weren’t many opportunities for growth in St. John’s Athletic Marketing department since the university already had an established nationally recognized athletic program. Thus, he went in search of employment elsewhere.

45 miles west of Queens at the green and developing D1 program of Stony Brook University, he found the chance he was looking for. 

Less than six months later Stony Brook’s rival, Hofstra University, enter Pritchard Gymnasium.   The Pride seizes control of the game midway through the first half, taking a 30-14 lead.   As the Seawolves try to claw their way back into the game, the 1,680 fans are entertained by student musical chairs, a frozen t-shirt contest and a Red Zone rendition of the “Cotton Eye Joe.”

Stony Brook manages to trim the deficit to five points with a little over a minute remaining in the game, but would get no closer falling 61-56.   After two hours of sitting, pacing and occasionally sprinting up and down the sidelines, VanWagner’s headset is ready to come off.  

Another performance over.  Time to ready the stage for conference play.