Rocco Constantino has been selected as the new Director of Athletics at Santa Barbara City College, the school announced Tuesday.
Constantino comes to Santa Barbara from New Jersey. He was the athletic director at New Providence High for the last two years and spent nine years as assistant athletic director at Bloomfield College, an NCAA Division 2 school in New Jersey.
Constantino’s first day at SBCC will be July 3.
“I couldn’t be more thrilled to join the family at SBCC,” Constantino said. “I hope to be a visible presence on campus and in the community and would like to communicate to our student-athletes, their families and the departments within the college that academics will always come first. We will represent Santa Barbara City College in the classroom, on the athletic fields and in the community with dignity and integrity.”
Constantino holds a Master’s degree in Educational Leadership from Montclair State University and a Bachelor’s degree in English/Writing from New Jersey City University.
He authored the book,“50 Moments That Defined Major League Baseball,” which was published in May of 2016. He also worked as a featured columnist for the sports site “Bleacher Report.”
Prior to getting into adminstration, Constantino was the head softball coach for 11 years at Bloomfield and the women’s soccer coach for three years. In 2015, he became the third softball coach in Central Atlantic Collegiate Conference history to reach 200 career wins. He was selected as Coach of Year in 2009 for the Central Atlantic Collegiate Conference and the East Coast Athletic Conference.
Constantino will take over for Ellen O’Connor, who served as SBCC’s interim athletic director for the 2016-17 academic year, when the Vaqueros won five Western State Conference championships, two individual State titles and had three women’s teams reach the State Final Four.
SBCC graduated 94 student-athletes who earned their Associate of Arts degrees, with 96 percent of these student-athletes transferring to four-year institutions.