PirateCrew: Seton Hall Pirates Football & Basketball Recruiting
The definitive source for all PirateCrew news.
BY JP Pelzman
When Jerry Walker decided not to go to an early-morning class on the day of his birthday, the then-Seton Hall undergraduate quickly found out how hands-on his academic advisor Robin Cunningham could be.
As in her hands pounding on the door of Walker’s dorm room.
It's a story Walker, now the director of his Jersey City-based charitable foundation Team Walker, had told many times since. There are many laughs in the tale, but also a very important message.
“I don’t care what day it is,” Walker says, recounting what Cunningham told him. “I'll give you five minutes to get to class right now.”
Cunningham had been tipped off by Walker’s professor that he hadn’t shown up to class, and as he told PirateCrew.com with a laugh, “I was a little dazed from the night before, but I made it to class.”
Cunningham, now a member of Team Walker’s Board of Directors, also can’t help but laugh when telling the story, recalling to PirateCrew how she told him, “So what? I work on my birthday. Everybody works on their birthday.”
Walker adds that Cunningham told him, “‘A birthday is not more important than your education.’”
"She was relentless, in a good way," Walker said.
Cunningham spent many years at Seton Hall stressing the importance of education to countless people. The former three-sport standout recently retired after a stellar career in academic services.
Cunningham came to Seton Hall after starring in basketball at a Catholic school in Westfield called Holy Trinity, which closed in the mid-1970s.
She recalled, “I didn’t have great plans to go far away. … I wasn’t very diligent in my college search.”
She took a visit to the campus, and later was recruited by then-coach Sue Dilley (who later married Richie Regan), also the associate athletic director, who offered her a scholarship for basketball. Once at Seton Hall, Cunningham then tried out for the tennis team, for which she played No. 1 singles for four years.
She also played softball, and her scholarship money increased each year as she participated in all three sports.
Once she began in her official position of director of academic support services in 1984, Cunningham began working extensively with men’s basketball, saying, “P.J. (Carlesimo) kind of set the tone.” Cunningham also cited women’s basketball coach Phyllis Mangina, baseball coach Mike Sheppard and track and field and cross-country coach John Moon as also being pro-active.
Later on with men’s basketball, coach Louis Orr came up with the idea of having Cunningham spend one extra hour a week with the team conducting leadership and team-building workshops, in addition to the study halls.
Cunningham says she has gotten feedback from former players on those, too.
“It makes sense to them now what we were doing,” she said. “It didn’t make sense to them then prior.”
Her role as an academic advisor to student-athletes ended in 2003 when she transitioned to a new job, working with freshmen.
“We were in charge of on-boarding the freshman classes,” she explained. “We also taught the one-credit university life class helping them adjust to college.”
The department has been in existence since 1987.
“We’ve also been able to put the student-athletes in their own section since 1987, which was very helpful,” she added. “It's a wonderful way to get the student-athletes acclimated as a group.”
During Kevin Willard’s tenure, Shaheen Holloway, then the lead assistant coach, contacted Cunningham after the 2015-16 season and asked her about re-establishing the weekly leadership sessions.
“I was thrilled,” she said. “I was so happy I was able to stay involved with the program through the workshops.”
Cunningham kept doing that up until the end of the 2019-20 season.
Looking back at her career, Cunningham says, “I went to school to be a teacher and at heart, I'm a teacher and I also was a student-athlete.
“It was my dream job,” she added. “I was a student-athlete, I get to be around student-athletes but I get to do my passion, which is teaching. So, it was just perfect.
“I understood that knowledge is power. … Once your mind is open to those things and the light bulb goes on, you just want more.
“I'm not saying it was easy,” she added. “In their heads, they were basketball players and academics was definitely a sideshow.”
Cunningham noted, “They didn’t think academics was going to be a priority at all and when it turned out to be the truth, even though we told them that during the recruiting process, when it turned out to be the truth, I think they were a little surprised.
Walker said, “In that age group, you think you’re invincible, you think you’re going to the NBA, but she drew the line in the sand and said this is going to carry weight further in life than just basketball.”
He noted that Cunningham told players, that even if they did play in the NBA or overseas, “After 10 years, you’ll be what? 35? So, she always advocated for education.
“She was firm with it too, she was tough,” Walker said of Cunningham, who In 1991 was the recipient of the Outstanding Adviser Award presented by the National Association for Academic Advisers. .
“I never acted like a fan,” Cunningham said, despite the fact she obviously knew the game. “I never hired tutors who were fans. I hired a few people who couldn’t tell a basketball from a bowling ball. I was disciplined and I wanted them to be disciplined.”
One funny story from the 1989 NCAA run came in Tucson, Ariz., after the Pirates beat Southwest Missouri State in the first round. Carlesimo asked Cunningham if she needed anything more in academic support, and she told him, “I’m not strong in math. I don’t want these guys to fall behind in math.”
While it is true math wasn’t her strongest subject, she admits now, “I just wanted to get my assistant out there. She was as much a part of the program as anybody.”
“PJ was like, ‘OH, OK, we’ll get her out here tomorrow.’ She was on a plane the next day.”
That assistant, Peg Hefferan, is now the associate athletics director at Wagner.
On a more serious note, Cunningham recalls how student-athletes such as Walker and Kelly Smith were scared to get up and speak in class. Now, of course, Walker is director of his foundation, which necessitates plenty of public speaking, and Smith has done soccer commentating for FOX after a successful playing career.
Cunningham said Walker wound up dropping the course, but Smith stuck it out.
“I text him and tell him he’s my hero,” she said of Walker.
“They remember where they came from,” she added. “They don’t forget. They overcame their fears and stuck it out and now they’re role models to everyone else.
“Most people think Team Walker is about athletics,” Walker said. “But that couldn’t be further from the truth. She's put together a lot of different things for us in terms of academics to make sure our academic program is second to none."
She also helped Walker after his career at The Hall was over, helping him petition the NCAA to extend his scholarship to he could finish his degree in 2003.
“I had three great careers at Seton Hall,” she said. “All three were just phenomenal. I'm just so grateful for everything the university did for me and everything I was able to contribute to it."
Clearly a sentiment equally shared by Seton Hall.
