Courtsey of Brian Beard

Kevin Loney, the assistant athletic director for facilities and event management, is a cornerstone of the Athletics Department at the College.

While Loney currently works in administration, his career at the College began as a football coach. Loney started coaching football before he even graduated college. Loney began playing football at a young age and continued into high school, solidifying a tight bond with his head coach. Although Loney had a rough experience with high school football and his team’s culture, he continued to play at the next level at Dickinson College.

“I wasn’t very good at [football], but I carried on,” Loney said. “Then I played behind some great players in college and had a great experience because of the people I was around. They are close friends who I talk to all the time now.”

Loney credits his time at Dickinson not only with forging lifelong friendships but also for teaching him how a collegiate athletic program operates.

“I learned a lot about what a successful program looks like, bringing that back to a goal of mine of going back to my high school eventually and coaching or maybe being an athletic trainer,” Loney said.

While Loney attended Dickinson, he stayed connected with his high school team, determined to help out and stay involved as much as possible.

“I didn’t go on [vacation] breaks in college,” Loney said. “While I was in college, my spring breaks and summer breaks were spent coaching at home.”

After graduating from Dickinson, Loney began what would become a multi-decade coaching career, first working with the Norwich University football team.

“One of the guys I played for in college had just taken the head coaching job at Norwich University in Vermont, and he was looking for young coaches. So, he hired me and one of my teammates from school,” he said.

After working at Norwich for two years, Loney went on to coach at many different institutions such as Wesleyan University, the University of Notre Dame and Nichols College before landing at Bowdoin in 2015.

While coaching at the College and beyond, Loney has always prioritized his relationships with his players.

“I’ve always been a relationship-first coach, ” Loney said. “My biggest challenge with coaching was the hard cases. One [former player] recently messaged me saying, ‘Thanks for what you’ve done for me,’ so helping kids go through things and make better decisions so they can be a better person in the world is really something.”

After a six-year stint working with the Bowdoin football team, Loney was approached by Tim Ryan, the director of athletics, and Janet Lohmann, then-dean of student affairs, to step up and become the assistant director for facilities and event management on campus.

While Loney had dedicated his entire career to coaching up until that point, he was not thrown off by the proposition of a career shift.

“It’s kind of funny,” Loney said. “I always saw myself at some point in time working in administration.”

After consulting athletic directors at various institutions who had also made the switch from coach to administrator and talking to his father, Loney decided to make the jump. However, he started amid a tumultuous time: the pandemic.

“It doesn’t get harder than dealing with navigating the pandemic and facilities. I was working on getting high schools back onto our fields, how we start having games again around COVID rules, vaccination status and all that. How do you help your student [workers], who are the ones checking vaccination cards [at games], navigate that situation?” Loney said.

Nowadays, Loney works to make all the sporting events on Bowdoin’s campus run as smoothly as possible. He is also in charge of keeping the facilities up to par and primed for student use.

“I think as a player, or as a coach, there’s so much that goes on behind the scenes to make [the] sport experience first class that you don’t realize, and that’s basically what I do,” Loney said.

Aside from facilities and events, Loney is also involved with the Athletes of Color Coalition as an adviser, a member of the Bowdoin Athletics Diversity, Equity and Inclusion Committee and on the NESCAC Coaches of Color Consortium.

While Loney is content and committed to his current job, he still misses some aspects of coaching.

“I miss coming up with the answers when you’re working through a game plan,” Loney said. “Looking at ‘Here’s the thing this team does that’s really challenging, and how do we figure out the answer?’”

However, Loney has maintained connections with students throughout his career, whether coaching from the sideline or organizing the logistics of Pickard Field sports scheduling.

“I am driven to meet students, meet kids where they are at and help them find their best version of themselves,” Loney said.