MEN’S AND WOMEN’S BASKETBALL ALUMNI PLAY IN PROS ABROAD
Within the last few years, several Hawks have taken their talents to the European and Australian pros.
The men’s and women’s basketball programs have been steady standouts among Hawks athletics. For the men, 10 Northeast-10 championships (the most of any team in league history), and for the women, recently advancing to the NCAA postseason for the second time in five years. In addition to racking up championships and winning seasons, both teams also have seen several of its alumni move on to play professionally abroad over the last few years.
“It’s great to have so many former players achieving their dreams of playing at the professional level,” says Chris Santo ’15, head coach for the men’s basketball team. Santo, a former Hawks standout, was named the 11th head coach in program history in April 2024. “The men’s basketball program here at Saint Anselm has always competed at the highest level of Division II, and having players graduate and go on to play professionally is one of the most gratifying pieces of being a college coach.”
The following alumni are actively playing in professional leagues abroad.
Tim Guers ’19 has signed a professional contract to play for Sporting CP in Portugal. The team competes in the Liga Portuguesa de Basquetebol (LPB), the country’s top men’s basketball league. Guers was a member of the Saint Anselm men’s basketball program for four years from 2015 to 2019. During his four seasons, he started in all 122 games he appeared in, which is the second-most in program history. He led the Hawks to 91 wins compared to just 32 losses during his career (.739 winning percentage) and finished as the program’s all-time scoring leader with 2,327 career points. Over that time, Guers led Saint Anselm to a Northeast-10 Conference Championship in 2016-17 as well as four straight trips to the NCAA Division II Men’s Basketball tournament. Across his four seasons, Guers was a two-time NE10 Player of the Year in 2017-18 and 2018-19, the league’s Rookie of the Year in 2015-16, and a four-time NE10 All-Conference selection, including three times as a member of the First Team.
Danny Evans ’20 played for Union Rennes Basket 35 in French NM1 last year. Evans played for two seasons on the Hilltop, and started in all 61 games, averaging 11.2 points per game and scoring just shy of 700 points. Averaging exactly five rebounds per tilt, Evans also had 2.6 assists per contest and helped his team to a 47-14 overall record.
Shannon Ryan ’20 has joined the Sunshine Coast Phoenix playing in Australian NBL One East. Previously playing for Baden in the Swiss Basketball League, Ryan was a standout Hawks player, appearing in all 28 games as a senior, leading all of NCAA Division II in double-doubles (26), defensive rebounds per game (26) and field goals made (271), and averaging 23 points per game, ranking seventh in the country.
Chris Paul ’22 has signed a professional contract to play for BBG Herford in Germany. He previously played professionally in Luxembourg and Finland. Paul helped the Hawks win a Northeast-10 (NE10) Championship and earn four NCAA Division II Tournament berths during his tenure on the Hilltop. During the 2018-19 campaign, Paul led Saint Anselm to an NCAA Division II East Region title and helped the team reach the Final Four. he was a four-time All-NE10 selection (two-time First Team pick), a two-time NABC All-District First Team selection, and a two-time D2CCA All-East Region Second Team selection.
Gustav Suhr-Jessen ’22 plays for Hottur in Icelandic Subway League. During his four years at Saint Anselm, he played and started in all games. In his senior year he averaged 10.3 points and 6.6 rebounds per game for Saint Anselm, and shot 44.7 percent from the floor (102-for-228).
Owen McGlashan ’23 signed his first ever contract with BK Iskra Svit, a professional basketball club based in Slovakia. McGlashan played two full seasons with the Hawks after transferring in from NCAA Division I University of Denver in Denver, Colo. While on the Hilltop, he helped the team win the Northeast-10 (NE10) Championship in 2022-23, and helped the team reach a pair of NCAA Division II Men’s Basketball Tournaments.
Miles Tention ’23 signed a professional deal with Tigers Tübingen in Germany. This marks the second professional contract for Tention, who played professionally last year in Cyprus. Tention helped the Hawks win two NE10 Championships and earn four NCAA Tournament berths. He was a threetime NE10 All-Conference selection and helped Saint Anselm win 86 games, compared to just 33 losses, from 2018-2023.
Tyler Arbuckle ’24 plays for Iverioni in Georgian Superleague. He was previously playing with HKK Mostar, a professional club that plays in the Basketball Championship of Bosnia and Herzegovina, the Balkan nation’s top league. Arbuckle helped the Hawks win two Northeast-10 (NE10) Championships and earn three NCAA Tournament berths during his tenure on the Hilltop. He was a three-time All-NE10 selection, a two-time All-Region selection, a one-time NABC All-American, and helped Saint Anselm win 76 games compared to just 42 losses during his career.
AMPING IT UP: TAYLOR COX ’01
SAMANTHA JETTE ’20
When Taylor Cox ’01 graduated from Saint Anselm, he never imagined he’d be lucky enough to turn his passion for music into a career. But in 2009, the sociology major-turned-business owner did just that.
Cox’s Amplified Nation specializes in high-quality custom amplifiers for music legends and new artists, including guitarists of famed bands such as Zac Brown Band and Pearl Jam. Today, the brand offers a catalog of seven bespoke amplifiers, each carefully handcrafted in their Hudson, Mass., shop.
What started as a business to create custom cabinetry to house speakers for amplifiers soon evolved into creating the amps themselves. After gaining insight into the industry and connecting with other musicians who shared his passion for sound, Cox knew the business had the potential to be something bigger.
With the help of his wife Alyson, Cox launched Amplified Nation out of their one-bedroom apartment. By 2015, they had a full line of boutique guitar amplifiers available for purchase. It started as a side business while they worked corporate jobs. The pair combined their business acumen with their passion for music to continue to grow the business. Alyson specializes in marketing and communications, and handles everything from website creation to brand storytelling, while Taylor leverages his sales background to identify new opportunities for the business and build relationships with customers.
Word of their product began to spread through the industry, and sales boomed. Cox credits quality craftsmanship for the amplifiers’ popularity. “At Amplified Nation, we pride ourselves on providing a true custom-shop experience for every customer,” says Cox.
The entire building process - from populating the circuit boards to fitting the amplifier into its personal enclosure - is geared to the customer’s unique style and preferences for an unparalleled musical experience.
“Our amplifiers are designed to create a deeply organic connection between the player, the guitar, and the amp. When you plug in, you’ll feel as though the amplifier becomes an extension of your instrument, responding intuitively to every nuance of your playing,” says Cox.
Within the catalog of seven core models, there is something for every style of player, cementing Amplified Nation as a key player in the industry, as well as the music community. “We’ve built a loyal following among musicians who value the unmatched tone and reliability of our products,” says Cox.
Cox reflects fondly on his time at Saint Anselm. He was president of the King Edward Society during his senior year, and the Hilltop fostered his love of playing guitar—he often performed at campus talent shows, as well as the coffee shop and pub. Beyond landing some of his first gigs at the college, Cox also learned valuable skills—namely, consumer behavior and influence—in his sociology and psychology classes, which helped shape his sales strategies.
The future looks bright for Amplified Nation. To keep up with the growing demand for the product, the business recently expanded the production team and doubled the size of the warehouse, and the shop has several custom products on the horizon that they plan to launch throughout the rest of this year.
“It’s a particularly exciting time for live music, with artists and audiences connecting on stages around the world,” says Cox. “We’re proud to be part of this industry, providing the tools that inspire creativity and elevate performance.”
PITCH PERFECT: RYAN FECTEAU ’05
BY DAVID DRIVER
Ryan Fecteau ’05 was not a highly recruited baseball pitcher coming out of high school despite an overall mark of 23-1. He attracted interest from some Division III schools throughout New England, and visited a Division I program in Connecticut, but the right-hander from Gilford High School chose to stay in state to pitch for the Hawks.
“Ken Harring was the head coach at the time, and he recruited me really hard,” says Fecteau. “I really liked him, and I liked his vision, and I liked the appeal of staying close to home. My parents were able to come and watch me quite a bit, and it was a good academic school.”
These days, Fecteau is competing in a different way. Since the 2018 season, he has been the associate head coach, pitching, for Virginia Tech in Blacksburg, Va. The Division I Hokies advanced to the Super Regional for the first time in 2022 and were ranked nationally early in the 2024 season.
Prior to the 2025 season, Fecteau had watched 24 of his pitchers get drafted by Major League teams, including 12 from Virginia Tech. Two of his students made it to the Majors— Virginia Tech product Zach Brzykcy of the Washington Nationals, and James Karinchak, who last pitched for Cleveland in 2023 and played for Fecteau at Bryant University in Smithfield, R.I.
When asked about his approach as the pitching coach under head coach John Szefc at Virginia Tech, Fecteau says it’s all about letting the players be themselves. “We try to identify guys who have some sort of uniqueness to them,” he says. “Letting their personality show daily is a big thing for me - the relationship aspect, that is what I value a lot. I enjoy watching them grow.”
This same approach played out in his four seasons with the Hawks. Saint Anselm was 9-35 in baseball in the spring of 2001 under Harring, the year before Fecteau took the mound at the college level. But a core group of players helped turn the program into a winner. The Hawks were 17-31 in Fecteau’s freshman season of 2002, improved to 23-20 the next season, and in 2004 were nationally ranked in Division II, won 12 straight games in one stretch, and finished the season 30-22.
Among the other players who aided in the improvement was lefty pitcher and Keene, N.H., native Parrish Castor ’06, who was drafted by the Marlins in 2004 and reached the Single-A level, and former outfielder Keith Beauregard ’05, now the hitting coach for the Detroit Tigers.
Fecteau received his bachelor’s degree in business in 2005, and then went on to Saint Lawrence University where he received his master’s degree in education in 2007. The college pitcher began to consider coaching as a career during his junior season when he realized just how many good college players there were, and to be drafted would be a challenge.
His first jobs were as a graduate assistant at Saint Lawrence, and then an assistant coach at Southern Utah and South Carolina Upstate, before returning to Saint Lawrence as an assistant coach. He was the assistant coach/recruiting coordinator at Bryant from 2011-16. Szefc hired him to be the assistant coach/recruiting coordinator at the University of Maryland in 2017, and the next year they both moved to Virginia Tech. Fecteau was an assistant coach from 2018-22, then promoted to associate head coach, pitching, in 2022.
Fecteau has become one of the top young pitching coaches in the country. “Our pitching operation has dramatically improved under his tutelage, especially considering the draft picks that have come out of here and our constant presence at the top of the ACC,” says Szefc. “Our success on the mound is attributed to his hard work with our staff [and] his recruitment of our pitching staff has also been top-notch.”
Editor’s Note: As Portraits went to press, we learned Ryan Fecteau ‘05 has become the pitching coach for Pepperdine University in Malibu, California
FROM THE HILLTOP TO INDIA: EMMA GOULET ’23
BY KATELYN ARNOLD ’23
Soon after graduating from Saint Anselm College, Emma Goulet ’23, a physics and psychology double major, received a job offer she couldn’t refuse: to teach quantum physics to Buddhist monks and nuns in India for four months as part of the Science for Monks & Nuns program.
The opportunity came from physics professor Ian Durham. It was something Durham himself had participated in several times. Without hesitation, she packed her bags for a trip that would change her life forever.
In retrospect, Goulet’s journey to India began taking shape the day she met Durham, which was as a prospective student at an early admitted open house. She and her family spent the day talking with him about his research on free will, and by the end of their conversation, he offered her a position to conduct research alongside him if she came to the college. In the years since, he has become her mentor.
“Professor Durham is probably the most influential person in my life,” she says. “He’s the reason why I went to Saint A’s—he’s just incredible [and] has so many wild connections and has such a sharp intellect.”
During Goulet’s time at Saint Anselm, Durham consistently supported her academic growth in and out of the classroom. Whether through conferences, extra exam prep, or connecting her with experts in the physics field, Durham was dedicated to Goulet’s success as a student, and it was Goulet who immediately came to mind when the teaching opportunity for Science for Monks & Nuns arose.
“The biggest thing that stuck out for me about Emma was her curiosity—she really wanted to understand things,” says Durham. “On top of that, of course, she was an exceptional student, was the winner of our Goulet Award in 2023, and was very methodical and studious— all of these traits are what made her particularly good for the opportunity in India.”
The Science for Monks & Nuns program, established in 1999 by His Holiness the Dalai Lama, was launched to bridge the gap between traditional Buddhist thought and Western science. The Dalai Lama emphasized the importance of learning Western sciences to help strengthen practitioners’ logical reasoning, while staying up to date with the world. He required five sciences to be taught, quantum physics being one of them. The program invites Western scientists such as Durham and Goulet to teach and provide valuable insight to the Buddhist monks and nuns.
A typical day at the monastery for Goulet included attending Durham’s classes, eating meals with the monks and nuns, hiking and exploring the local culture, and learning Nepali and Hindi words from the monks.
Goulet also traveled to Dharamsala, India, to teach a three-month physics distancelearning course to approximately 60 virtual participants, and five in-person attendees ranging in age from 26 to 69. She covered topics such as particle physics, quantum physics, mathematics, and the scientific method.
For Goulet, it was a life-changing experience. “I really want to keep the culture of the Buddhist communities with me, specifically the ideas of what’s important in life [such as] generosity and community-based culture,” she says.
Looking ahead, Durham and Goulet are co-writing a textbook for future courses, which will be translated into Tibetan. The two also returned to India this past April for the 25th anniversary of the Science for Monks & Nuns program.