Suffolk’s head coach and assistant coach are swapping roles.
Assistant Chris Glionna is moving up to become the school’s head coach, while Brian Horan, the head coach since 1999, steps aside to become the assistant.
Both Glionna and Horan joined the Suffolk staff in 1999. The Rams, under Horan, had a 41-66-8 record and reached the ECAC Northeast Division III playoffs for the first time since 1993. Suffolk finished 10-12-2 in the 2003-04 season and was seeded seventh in the ECAC Northeast Division III tournament.
Glionna, a 1995 Suffolk graduate, also earned his Law degree at Suffolk University Law School in 2001. He is currently an attorney for the Commonwealth of Massachusetts.
“I am happy to continue working with Brian, he was a good mentor and I am looking forward to continuing the progress he began and thankful to the University for the opportunity,” said Glionna, a 2001 Suffolk Law School graduate. “I am looking forward to being even more competitive and go on with the progress that has been started in the last five years. I am excited to stay with the University and staying here was important to me. I am very excited about working with the returning players from last year’s playoff qualifier team.”
Horan said he was looking to spend more time with his family.
“My kids are getting older and involved in a lot of activities from figure skating to tap and jazz for my girls and my son is starting skating; I will be able to focus more time on my family,” Horan said. “I will still be very involved with the Suffolk hockey program. Chris Glionna has worked hard the past five years with me and he deserves a chance at the head coaching position. Chris has been a very big part of the program and has done the majority of the recruiting and he deserves the head coaching position, I am glad I was able to help Chris along the way.”
Glionna will continue to work with the defense and Horan will concentrate his work with the forwards. Glionna has been running practice for the past few years and Suffolk athletes will not see that changing.
“The players will not see a difference in how things are executed, but that Chris will be more hands on game to game,” Horan said. “I don’t think the players will see much of a change.”
Suffolk athletic director James Nelson said, “We are enormously pleased to welcome Chris Glionna as the successor to Brian Horan as head coach of our men’s ice hockey team while also retaining the valued skills and service of Brian as associate head coach. The loyalty, recruiting talents, practice and game management skills are but a few of the positive characteristics Chris has developed that now will even more come to the forefront as he builds upon the success of this past season’s ECAC Northeast Division playoff team.”
