This week’s Project 100+ memory comes from Matt Sprang.  He was born in Philadelphia and raised in Sicklerville, New Jersey.  His mother worked as a nurse for almost fifty years at St. Christopher’s Children Hospital in Philadelphia.  His father earned a degree in journalism from Penn State.  After working in journalism for a short period of time, he moved into sales.  Matt always believed that this was strictly in order to have a greater income due to the increasing size of their family.  Matt is the oldest of four children, all sons.  When Matt was younger, his parents alternated their working lives.  His mother worked one or two nights a week as well as on the weekends, while his father worked during the days.  His father never worked a weekend as far as Matt can recall.  Matt attended public schools and graduated from Highland High School in 1995.  In the Fall that year, he attended the University of Connecticut and swam on the University’s Division I team.  He was a backstroker and was all-Big East his sophomore year.  However, he did not do as well academically as he wished.  He enjoyed the social life of college a lot, but, in hindsight, he wished he had been more mature about his academic work.  He remembers being able to hide in large lecture classes.  Despite his swimming success, he realized that he needed a change and left Connecticut after finishing his sophomore year.  He took a year off from college.  He still wanted to swim, so he was training and trying to figure out which college to attend next.  He held a variety of jobs during this year, including as an associate for Old Navy in Deptford and as a lifeguard.  On Memorial Day in 1998, he called Tony Lisa who was the head swim coach at Rowan University. He had known Tony since he was seven years old.  Soon, Tony had worked some magic, and Matt was admitted to Rowan.  Two years later, he graduated from Rowan with a history major.  At the time, he hoped to become a college history professor, but he did not get into any doctoral programs with funding.  He spent another year thinking about his next step, mulling over another round of applications to doctoral programs in history.  However, during this period, he changed his mind and decided to pursue sports management.  Temple University accepted him into their graduate program in 2001, and he began there in the summer.  He took one or two classes a semester while working full-time.  He worked at Two Vic’s, a screen printing and embroidery shop in Glassboro, and coached swimming at various places, including Gloucester County Institute of Technology (GCIT). During the 2003-2004 academic year, he coached swimming at Binghamton University in New York.  This position also served as his required internship for his Temple degree.  After his year at Binghamton, he joined a company started by one of his former teammates, doing sales for his online company.  In the Fall of 2004, he became the head coach at GCIT.  This gave him the financial resources to complete the very last requirements for his master’s degree from Temple, which he earned in 2005.  Matt coached at GCIT for four years before he convinced the administration that it should not be in the swimming business.  One of his arguments was that none of the swimming students in his program actually went to GCIT.  Instead, they came to his pool after their own school days ended in various parts of the County.  Matt then launched Greater Philadelphia Aquatic Club to replace the defunct GCIT program.  He was the head coach, administrator, chief financial officer, and everything else for the new business.  Matt takes pride in having built a successful program, both in and out of the water. He coached national champions, was selected to be a USA Swimming staff member for several international competitions, all while the program grew to over 500 members.  At the high point, Matt had forty or forty-five employees working for him.  Due to a disastrous series of events related to the construction of a complementary swim school, his financial situation soon turned uncertain and worrisome.  After a lawsuit and a subsequent settlement, Matt decided to take six months to plan his next step.  This period ended in March 2020, just as the pandemic began.  The state mandated that all swim teams get out of the water for 100 days.  Even after this period ended, the state required that all swimming be done outside.  By December, Matt was spending $2,000 a week on propane alone just to heat the pool to 75 degrees, which was not even the recommended level for swimming competition.  In 2021, Matt and the Greater Philadelphia Aquatic Club’s members were able to return to indoor swimming again, and things began to improve.  In early 2022, things returned almost to normal, but Matt found his passion for his work diminishing.  In 2024, he sold his business profitably.  Since then, he has been working part-time as a business coach and event facilitator, something that he had begun exploring during the pandemic.  He enjoys this work quite a bit, as he likes bringing people together and helping them see things, like professional development, in a new and different way.

***** 

I knew of Rowan University from a young age because of Tony Lisa who had been the institution’s swim coach for many years.  He coached my summer swim team and became one of my most important mentors.  Although I knew that he wanted me to join him at Rowan, he never made a hard push for me to go there.  Even after I left Connecticut, he allowed me to come to my own decision, though he made it clear that he wanted me at Rowan.  In addition to Tony, I also had several teachers who were Rowan alumni, including Marge Jackson.  She was my junior year teacher for Honors United States History I.  She was an amazing teacher.  In my senior year, I worked with her very closely as I was the president of the History Club, which she advised.  My fondest memory of that year was our senior trip to Cooperstown and Hyde Park, which she and I organized. 

I skipped orientation at Rowan, as I always had a community through the swim team, and I was already integrated into life at Rowan before classes began.  History had always been my favorite subject in school, but I started as a political science major at Connecticut.  At Rowan, I switched to history.  I no longer wanted to go into politics, and I envisioned a life of teaching history and coaching swimming at an area high school.  I loved my history classes right from the beginning.  I always enjoyed the reading and came to love the research and the writing as well.  I was a better student at Rowan, largely because studying had become a bigger priority for me.  This was my second chance, and I was not going to fumble away the opportunity.  I enjoyed United States history the most, and I took most of my classes in this area.

I had several classes with Dr. Gary Hunter, and I loved his classes.  I had him for Historical Methods, African American History, and United States History after 1945.  He was my first Rowan history professor.  At Connecticut, the classes always had a lecturer in front of a large room of students and exams were the common assignment.  Dr. Hunter (and almost all the professors at Rowan) had an interactive teaching philosophy.  As students, we were encouraged to participate in class discussions, and we completed a wide variety of assignments. Dr. Hunter was so different from the instructors that I had known before.  He opened up about his life to us in class, and it was apparent that he genuinely cared what we thought.  I can still remember him telling us about his work in Africa and even personal details, such as his favorite movie being The Wizard of Oz. 

Dr. Kress was another faculty member that I remember fondly.  He was easy to talk to and became an advisor for me.  I should also note that he could also be quite blunt and honest.  I had him for Latin American History and another course whose title I can’t remember now.  While the title of the course eludes me, I do remember that we all had to do a research project on a historical figure and then deliver a fifteen-minute presentation.  I chose Babe Ruth, and I can remember that the research we did was more important to Dr. Kress than the presentation.  

Dr. McDevitt and you were new faculty members, both hired in my second year. You two brought great energy to the department.  I loved your class on the Civil War and Reconstruction, which covered one of my favorite subjects in history.  It was great that I got the chance to take that course in my senior year.  I liked your class so much that I took you again for United States Labor History in the Spring semester.  I can remember that you had us all complete an oral history interview.  I chose my father and learned much about his life working as a salesman, including how he navigated losing his job several times during his career. 

Dr. McDevitt agreed to teach an independent study with me on sports history.  I wrote about the process of building Veteran’s Stadium in Philadelphia.  The research skills that he taught me in this course proved incredibly valuable to me.  In fact, the research skills that he taught me built upon those that I had been learning in my history major, beginning with Dr. Hunter.  Without those skills, my team and I would not have been able to reach the legal settlement discussed above.  And without that settlement, my family would have faced financial ruin.  So, I owe Dr. McDevitt and the history faculty greatly for this service.  Years later, I can remember reading a Sports Illustrated and seeing a letter from Dr. McDevitt.  He was complaining that SI had not included Paul Robeson as the greatest athlete from New Jersey.  It was such a cool moment when I read this.  It brought back fond memories of my time at Rowan.

My life turned around while I was at Rowan, especially academically.  I had never wanted to go to Rowan because it was only seven miles from my house.  As I look back now, I am confident that this turnaround was a combination of my own growing maturity and the Rowan faculty.  While I was consistently a successful swimmer, I was an underachieving student at Connecticut.  At Rowan, I excelled and even received the Athletic Director’s Award in my senior year for having the highest Grade Point Average among all male athletes.

*****

This is part of the Department of History’s “Project 100+,” an ongoing collection of memories by Glassboro State College and Rowan University alumni and staff that began as part of the celebration of the 100^th anniversary of the founding of Glassboro Normal School, later Glassboro State College, and now Rowan University.  Due to interest in the project, the number of interviewees continues to grow.  Thanks to Laurie Lahey for helping proofread and edit the final versions.  Email carrigan@rowan.edu with questions or corrections.  You can find the Link to all of the Project 100 and Project 100+ entries on the Web:  https://www.rowan.edu/ric-edelman-college/departments/history/alumni/project-100-plus/