St. John's University Athletics
Anton Goff Introduced as St. John's Director of Athletics
11/14/2016 12:00:00 AM | General
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QUEENS, N.Y. -- St. John's officially welcomed the sixth athletic director in the storied history of the program on Monday afternoon, as Anton Goff was introduced at a press conference on the Queens campus prior to the men's basketball team's game against Binghamton.
"It's a great day to be a Johnnie," said Goff in his opening statement. "I have to first thank all you guys here for coming out. I know everyone has a busy schedule, we have a game tonight, and the fact that you would take a little bit of your time out of your busy day to come here to support me, to support this athletic department, and to support the university means a tremendous amount to me. I want to thank President Gempesaw, Joe Oliva and Tariq Turner. This journey has been incredible. When you interview for a job and you meet people and you feel like you're not interviewing, you feel like you're talking to family, it's been incredible. I knew I wanted to be here after I met you guys for the first five minutes. I really appreciate you entrusting me with the responsibility of being the athletic director here and I'm looking forward to doing great things here."
The program began with Vice President for Administration, Secretary and General Counsel Joseph Oliva, Esq., addressing the crowd and praising Goff's character.
"When you start one of these search processes, you start out by gathering the traits and characteristics of the person you are looking for," said Oliva. "We didn't know it at the time, but when we were drawing up that person, we were drawing up Anton Goff. We didn't know it was Anton Goff at that moment, we hadn't met Anton Goff yet, but that person was Anton Goff. "
Following his comments, Oliva welcomed Conrado "Bobby" Gempesaw, Ph. D, President, St. John's University, to the stage, where he echoed Oliva's enthusiasm about the future of St. John's Athletics under Goff's leadership.
"I met Anton Goff last month when he came for his interview," remarked Gempesaw. "Within the first five minutes of the interview, I knew he would be our choice for Athletic Director. I was impressed with his experience as a sitting AD and his emphasis on academics, athletics, accountability, compliance, character, and community service. He noted that the new Athletic Director must not just be a leader of the Athletic Department but must be very visible across the entire University community."
Next up to the podium was Goff, who laid out his vision for St. John's athletics as a program of prominence not only in the BIG EAST, but in the national landscape of college athletics. Goff also placed a tremendous amount of emphasis on ensuring the academic success and well-being of each and every Red Storm student-athlete.
"The two words I want everyone to remember when I leave this podium are `embrace excellence'," said Goff. "We're going to embrace excellence academically. The one thing I know is that this is an institution of higher learning. We're going to focus on our students-athletes graduating and contributing positively in our environment. The one thing I know is that if I have the choice between our student-athletes graduating in four years, or being four-year All-Americans, I'm going to pick the graduate every time. Because the four year All-American is just that: four years. The greatest thing about graduating is that it's for life. The one thing I know about St. John's is that we don't have to choose between the two. We're going to be able to do both. We're going to create All-Americans and we're going to graduate people at a very high level.
"We're going to win here. We're going to win the right way," continued Goff. "This isn't just about returning to the glory days of the 80s when St. John's was on top. This is about taking St. John's to a whole another level that we've never seen before. I'm talking about winning BIG EAST Championships and competing for National Championships. That's what we're going to be about when I get here."
