Quinnipiac director of athletics and recreation Jack McDonald will retire in June 2015 after 20 years in that position, according to the New Haven Register.
The 63-year-old McDonald reportedly made the announcement at an athletic department staff meeting Wednesday morning.
McDonald, a former chairman of the NCAA men’s ice hockey committee, was hired in the fall of 1995 to oversee Quinnipiac’s transition from Division II and in that time, the school built a dual-sport facility for basketball and hockey (the $52 million TD Bank Sports Center, which opened in January 2007), upgraded conferences in all sports (hockey joined the ECAC in 2006), came within one win of a hockey national championship (in 2013, losing to Yale) and saw the women’s Frozen Four hosted by the school this past spring.
He is currently the chairman of the NCAA women’s ice hockey committee.
The former athletic director at Denver, McDonald helped lay the groundwork for that school’s return to Division I athletics in the late 1990s, with the hockey program as the centerpiece.
