Brian Stanchak, Penn's new coordinator of basketball operations, has been coaching hoops since he was 15, and now he is one step closer to his goal of becoming a Division I head coach.
Stanchak will now be responsible for most of the administrative work for the Penn men's and women's basketball teams.
For the past four years, Stanchak was a student at Seton Hall, where he served as the men's basketball team's student assistant.
Several months before his graduation in May, he contacted various collegiate coaches around the nation, looking to secure a job.
"I wanted to throw some feelers out to coaches that I really respected," Stanchak said. One of those coaches was Penn's Fran Dunphy.
"For anyone that knows college basketball, you know that coach Dunphy is so well respected," Stanchak said. "I just knew that it would be a great opportunity to work for him some day."
Little did Stanchak know that there was an opening on Dunphy's staff, as former head of basketball operations Andy Pogach was leaving for graduate school at North Carolina. Pogach contacted Stanchak and arranged for him to come to campus.
"When I came to the interview, I knew I wanted the job and after leaving the interview I knew I really wanted the job," Stanchak said.
Since taking over the job on June 7, Stanchak has done everything from coach at the school's annual summer basketball camp to help out the women's basketball program, which has no assistant coaches yet.
As a teen, Stanchak was an assistant coach at Delaware Valley Regional High School in central New Jersey. At the same time, he was an Amateur Athletic Union head coach and an assistant for two other AAU squads.
When looking at colleges, he sought a place where he could work directly with one of the nation's leading basketball coaches.
He eventually chose Seton Hall, whose coach at the time was Tommy Amaker.
"I applied to Seton Hall and that was it, so if I didn't get in then I would have had to find another option," Stanchak said.
After Stanchak's freshman year, Amaker left to coach at Michigan. Amaker was replaced by current Pirates coach Louis Orr.
While Stanchak was upset to see his mentor leave, he said that in the long run it was nice to get "two perspectives on coaching instead of one."
Now at Penn, he is excited to begin his first year with the program.
Stanchak has already started to meet some of the players as they return to campus, and he is very complimentary of them.
"I've been very impressed with the players - how they talk and how they react to me," he said. "I've been very impressed with how they maintain themselves on a personal level."
