Following the conclusion of the 2015 season in late October, longtime Stony Brook Women’s Soccer head coach Sue Ryan was relieved of her duties.
On Wednesday, Stony Brook Athletics announced that Brendan Faherty will replace her.
Faherty spent the last three seasons as an assistant and recruiting coordinator with the University of Washington Women’s Soccer team, which made it to the NCAA Tournament the last two seasons.
“We believe that we have hit a home run with the hire of Brendan Faherty as our new head women’s soccer coach,” Stony Brook Director of Athletics Shawn Heilbron said in a press release. “Brendan has experienced tremendous success throughout his career and is the right leader to propel our women’s soccer program to where we expect it to be each year – competing for America East championships and NCAA appearances.”
Faherty is Heilbron’s first major head coaching hire since the department announced its “Together We Transform” fundraising initiative in July, which aims to drastically improve athletics programs at Stony Brook.
One of the initiative’s aims is to “Recruit, support and retain quality coaches in all sports in order to provide our student-athletes with the best opportunity to win at a high level.”
“I expect that Brendan will come in and instill a culture of success at Stony Brook, while embracing our departmental vision to positively transform the life of each student-athlete,” Heilbron said.
Stony Brook missed the America East playoffs in each of the last two seasons under Ryan, who had been the Seawolves’ head coach since 1985. She remains with the school as an assistant professor.
Prior to his tenure at Washington, Faherty was an assistant women’s soccer coach at the University of Massachussetts from 2010 to 2011 before becoming the associate head coach in 2012. He began his career as the head coach of the University of New Haven in Division II from 2002 to 2009, where he became the winningest coach in school history. Before coaching, he played at Northeastern University from 1996 to 1999.
