It was 2003 and Matthew Capell was working at Delphi Thermal Systems. But he wasn’t happy.
A few months earlier, Capell thought he had it all figured out. A few days after receiving his electrical engineering diploma from Alfred University, Capell went to work for Delphi in Lockport, with plans to help with the basketball team at his alma mater Barker at night.
Dissatisfied with his day job, Capell decided to return to school. And he was able to secure a spot as a graduate assistant at Clarkson University. It only took a week for Capell to call home to Gasport and tell his parents that he wanted to be a college basketball coach for the rest of his life.
Over the next two decades, Capell scrounged, learned and worked his way up the coaching ladder. After five stops as an assistant, his long-time mentor Tobin Anderson accepted a position at Fairleigh-Dickinson University in 2022 and Capell ascended to be the head coach of Division II St. Thomas Aquinas College, about 15 miles from the George Washington Bridge to New York City.
Twelve days before Anderson’s FDU squad became the second 16 seed to beat a No. 1 in the NCAA tournament, Capell won the East Coast Conference tournament in his first season as the head coach.
In three seasons as a head coach, Capell has gone to the ECC final each year, winning twice and compiled a 76-21 record. And even though STAC didn’t win the conference this season, Capell returned to Western New York and knocked off the unbeaten No. 1 team in the country, Daemen, in the NCAA Division II East Regional second round.
“I thought I was going to help out with my high school and I was totally fine with that. That’s all I had on my radar,” Capell said. “This game has taken me all over the place. I’ve now seen 39 states, mostly because of basketball. I’ve been to several different countries because of it. I’ve met some really great people, developed relationships with people that I never would have met growing up in rural Western New York. So it’s been a pretty amazing journey.”
Just because Capell devoted his adult life to coaching doesn’t mean it was his only job. At Division II and Division III schools, assistant coaches are often part-time employees, so Capell had to supplement his income elsewhere.
He worked at recreational centers, parks, conducted personal training and individual basketball lessons. Anything to offer enough money to continue his coaching career. Capell estimated that he made less than $10,000 per year for the first third of his coaching career.
After a year as a graduate assistant at Mercyhurst, Capell was promoted to full-time assistant. After six years in Erie, he left for a part-time gig when Anderson became head coach at STAC
Capell’s relationship with Anderson dated to his first coaching job. Capell needed to fulfill a class requirement in college and did so by helping Jerry Jusianiec’s Alfred State team. Jusianiec was a former colleague of Anderson’s and referred Capell upon learning he was trying to get into coaching.
Capell’s first job as a graduate assistant at Clarkson was on Anderson’s staff. When Anderson left for Division III Hamilton College in 2004, Capell followed. Twelve of Capell’s 19 years as an assistant came on Anderson’s staff.
“One thing about Matt that makes him special is everybody likes him,” Anderson said. “He’s great to the secretaries, he’s great to other coaches, he’s just a great person. There’s not a person you’ll find that’ll say a bad word about him, which is pretty phenomenal.”
A year into his run at STAC, Capell finally became a full-time employee at the school. To do so, he became the school’s tennis coach. While Capell was a well-rounded athlete, playing football, basketball and running track at Alfred, he had never played tennis.
Capell watched YouTube videos and copied other quality programs nearby to learn which players to recruit and how to make practices worthwhile. Eventually they gave him the women’s tennis job also, making him a full-time employee at STAC and he led both programs to the NCAA tournament.
He was also the eSports director at STAC and that team qualified for a national event in Atlanta. But Gary Manchel saw Capell’s eye for talent while he was an assistant on his teams at Mercyhurst.
Capell had to adapt to recruiting scholarship players, because at Division III, there are no scholarships or roster limits, so they can recruit in volume. With less margin for error at Mercyhurst, Capell quickly learned to find players and gained Manchel’s trust to the point that he didn’t need to make complicated pitches when recommending a player.
“Matt’s kind of the whole package,” Manchel said. “Matt has the idea of what he’s looking for. He has the capability of sitting in a gym and finding a guy that maybe other people don’t want or don’t think is good enough. He also has the ability, when they get there, to make him the best player they can be with individual instruction, with practices, with his IQ, with his development, with his coaching.”
It also helped that Capell possesses a genuineness that attracts players. Recruits knew Capell wasn’t looking to use them as a springboard to a better opportunity.
Although Capell knew he wanted to be a head coach within five years of being a coach, he waited nearly 20 years for the right job, an eternity for a non-Division I assistant with such aspirations. (Anderson and Manchel spent a combined 14 seasons as assistants at any level.)
As a result, his teams won nearly 70% of their games.
“He’s not one in a million, but maybe 1/100 as far as someone that is loyal and someone that is going to have your back and is not going to be one step looking out the door,” Manchel said. “Whatever job he’s put in front of, he’s going to give it 100% and he’s just going to focus on that. And I think people can learn a lot from that.”
Manchel thought Capell was ready to be a head coach when he left for STAC in 2013. Capell ended up waiting for another nine years and could have prolonged it even longer.
When Anderson accepted FDU’s offer, he asked Capell to come. But Capell was ready to be a head coach, an idea Anderson encouraged.
At Mercyhurst, Capell was one of three coaches on the staff — including Manchel — so he learned to do every job in the program. While at STAC, Anderson also attempted to give Capell insight on duties a head coach might encounter that an assistant wouldn’t.
Before taking the FDU job, Anderson thought he had another head coaching job lined up and Capell was poised to become STAC’s head coach, but that job fell through and Capell remained an assistant without complaint. He also spurned other Division II head coaching jobs while with STAC.
That’s why Anderson, days after being fired by Iona — a decision panned by the college basketball community — despite reaching the MAAC championship game in his second season, flew to Buffalo to watch Capell and STAC play Daemen in the NCAA tournament.
“I’m a big believer in a guy going to be a head coach,” Anderson said. “… Everything falls on you; it’s just a different perspective. … I was sitting there watching the games — Matt’s become a really good head coach. And that’s impressive because a lot of assistants become head coaches and they fail. It’s not easy because it’s a whole different situation. He’s done really well.”
Capell had less than 24 hours to decide whether he was going to make the Division I jump with Anderson. But he already had a track record of making difficult, but correct decisions.
Delphi filed for bankruptcy less than two years after he left. Since leaving Mercyhurst for a part-time job, STAC has gone to the ECC final in all but 12 of his seasons there, winning eight conference tournament championships and 11 NCAA tournament games.
Now Capell is learning to adapt to stay among the premier teams in the country. As the transfer Division I transfer portal trickles down to Division II, he doesn’t lament that Division I schools have pilfered 10 of his players, he uses it as a recruiting pitch.
Capell is honest in saying that he would listen for the right Division I offer and knows that it’s not an impossibility, not just because of Anderson, but that 21 coaches in this year’s March Madness field coached Division II or Division III at some point. But true to his personality, Capell isn’t in a rush to leave STAC.
“I’ve seen people go other places where they thought the grass was greener and they were surprised when they got there,” Capell said. “It would have to be something that would be really special to leave.”