Eric WolfAssistant CoachMen's LacrosseHarvard UniversityWarm-up RoundFavorite color: Crimson, of course.Favorite food: Anything my mom cooks.Childhood idol: Michael Jordan and Derek Jeter.Favorite hobby: Music all day everyday. I named my own genre, it hasn’t picked up yet. It’s called Eclectic Soul.What motivates you to get out of bed in the morning?What really gets me going in the morning is working with the players. It's fun being around the athletes. Particularly at our school, our student athletes are highly motivated. Work, in the environment here, doesn’t feel like work. It feels like a place where we like to go spend time. They make it exciting to show up every day. I want to do all I can for the players on the team and the program. Each day I try to make it better than it was the day before.What is your favorite success story or personal achievement in your coaching career?What I enjoy most about coaching is that when the players graduate, they know we still care about them. Hearing from the players after they graduate is one of my proudest achievements. It's special to me when I run into former players and they are excited to see me. I love reconnecting with them, and seeing the relationships we established have held strong. Those relationships still mean something to those guys. The time we have invested in each other comes back on both ends. Who are your mentors?It all starts with my parents. My mother was a teacher, and my father was an attorney. My brother is someone I looked up to as well. My father was a huge influence on me because of his work ethic. For 30 years he woke up every day at 4:30-5 o’clock in the morning to go into the city. I watched my mother go through the life of being a teacher struggling to find a permanent job on Long Island. I saw her come home from some pretty tough days with what she had to go through. Seeing both my parents’ work ethic was a huge inspiration to me. For coaching, my mentor was my coach, Scott Marr, at the University at Albany. I played for him, and then he created a position for me to start my coaching career after I graduated. Then, I moved to Siena the next year with Brian Brecht. He taught me about recruitment and how to run a program. He taught me how to hustle for everything you get and how to make it work with what you have. Coach Marr taught me how to treat people. He taught me that if you treat people the right way, how you want to be treated, it will come back tenfold. Coach Marr, outside of my parents, has had the biggest influence on my life.You started coaching in your early 20s. What advice can you give to aspiring young coaches?The first thing, which is against the grain of the millennial generation, is be willing to work for nothing. If you want to get into coaching, you really need to be willing to scrape and earn your keep. In this profession there is no promise that your hard work will lead to anything, but if you do things the right way and work hard, more times than not good things are going to happen for you. It’s important to believe in what you’re doing, research and continually get better at your craft. A young coach has to have a humble mental approach. You don’t know everything, and you’re never going to. You need to ask people for help and keep your ego in check.It’s really important to enjoy what you are doing. If you’re not excited to go to work every day, and you’re not invested in the players’ lives it can be problematic. You won't be successful if you chase after money or different jobs year to year. You really have to jump in with both feet and commit to the job and the school where you are. If you do things the right way, opportunities will come for you to climb the ladder.What is your coaching philosophy?My philosophy centers around treating people right. I picked up a quote along the way that says, “People don’t care how much you know until they know how much you care.” If you invest in people and you give them time, you actually listen to what they’re saying, they will do the same for you. Another great quote a father of one of my former players said was, “The most valuable thing you can give your children is your time.” I've found that things work out much better when people know you care and you’re invested in them. It all starts and ends with people. That comes from from Coach Marr, the kids I have been privileged to coach and most importantly, my family.