City of Basketball Love

By David Comer
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After spending nearly half of his life coaching the men’s basketball team at Gwynedd Mercy University and building the program into one of the premier Division III programs in the region, 52-year-old John Baron is leaving for a new challenge.

Baron, who spent the last 23 years as the Gwynedd Mercy head coach and the two years before that as an assistant at the school, was named the new boss of the men’s basketball team at Division II Holy Family University last week.

“It’s been a whirlwind,” Baron said. “No doubt about it.”

Baron, an Olney native and graduate of Central High School and York College, will be taking over a Holy Family program that under former head coach Ryan Haigh went a combined 46-92 during the last six years (with no season in 2020-21 due to COVID-19).

“The position became open and published,” Baron said on Thursday, a day after the school formally announced him as the sixth head coach in program history. “I thought the schools were very similar, and I’ve been proven right on that. The schools are so similar. I thought it was a very good fit, and it’s up a level. It’s a new challenge.”

There is no denying that Baron has proven he can win. During his 23 seasons in charge at Gwynedd Mercy, including a 2020-21 season shortened to two games due to COVID-19, he went 409-198 (.674), won at least 20 games 11 times and reached six NCAA tournaments.

“We are thrilled to welcome John Baron as the next head coach of Holy Family University men’s basketball,” Holy Family athletic director Tim Hamill said in a statement. “Coach Baron brings a pedigree of leadership, player development, and a relentless commitment to excellence both on and off the court. His deep ties to the region and proven track record in building a winning culture align perfectly with our vision for the future of Tigers basketball. We are confident coach Baron will inspire our student-athletes to reach new heights in the classroom, in the community, and in competition.”

Said Baron: “Holy Family seems to be a very special place. I felt very comfortable knowing that I am leaving something special and going somewhere special.”

Baron said that the timing was right for the change. His daughter, Jaylen, will graduate from the University of Alabama this spring. His son, JP, is finishing his sophomore year at Lynn University in Boca Raton, Fla., where he was a key contributor for the school’s basketball team that made the Division II NCAA tournament and lost to eventual national champion Nova Southeastern.

Baron said that after people congratulate him on his new job, the first question he gets most often is whether JP will be joining him at Holy Family. He won’t be.

“He’s very happy,” the elder Baron said of his son. “He loves the school.”

For Baron, he would like to try to recreate at Holy Family what he had developed at Gwynedd Mercy - both on and off the court.

“When I interviewed for the position, I talked about the staples we had at Gwynedd,” he said. “We wanted to cut it, take it out and move it over to Holy Family. We have a process. We continue to work on the process. If you surround yourself with the right people, the winning will take care of itself.”

The local Division III landscape will look much different next season, with Baron leaving Gwynedd Mercy, longtime Swarthmore College coach Landry Kosmalski making the jump to an assistant coaching position at Division I Campbell University, and Bryn Athyn eliminating its program altogether. 

Baron said that his coaching staff at Gwynedd Mercy — Brian Corrado, Kevin White, Ben Ostrow and Richie Dunham — will follow him to Holy Family. He is now trying to get to know the players from last year’s Holy Family team, which went 8-20 but lost 14 of those 20 games by 10 points or less. 

The roster from that team, composed entirely of players from Pennsylvania, New Jersey and New York with a heavy local bent, included three seniors and one graduate student with the remainder consisting of juniors or younger.

“The first thing I am doing is getting to know the current team — their skill set, what they liked about the past, what they’d like to see in the future,” Baron said. “Recruiting the team back is the number one thing to do in the spring.”

Baron also will have to bring in players to complete the roster.

“We’re not just looking to take anybody,” he said. “We’re looking to take the right people.”

With the jump from Gwynedd Mercy, a school of about 2,000 students in Gwynedd Valley, to Holy Family, with approximately 3,000 students in Northeast Philadelphia, there will be other changes for Baron.

First, with Holy Family being a Division II school, there is now scholarship money available.

“I have to be a really good money manager,” he said.

Additionally, Baron will just be coaching at Holy Family. At Gwynedd Mercy, he held multiple administrative positions through the years in addition to his coaching duties. Most recently, he served as the Gwynedd Mercy athletic department’s director of academic coordination. 

The jump to Division II will be a change as well. Holy Family competes in the Central Atlantic Collegiate Conference, which includes schools such as Jefferson University and Chestnut Hill College.

Baron said he has been studying various Division II leagues - primarily the CACC, which is the league he will be coaching in, and the Pennsylvania State Athletic Conference, commonly known as the PSAC - and has noticed various styles of play.

“Some of the teams play fast without traditionally big guys,” Baron said. “Some play with multiple big guys and big guys who can play the wing. … All of us coaches can come up with a whole bunch of X’s and O’s, but none of us is any good unless we have really good players.”

Baron said the biggest differences between Division II and Division III players are that Division II players are “bigger, stronger and faster.”

Holy Family, which has not had a winning season since finishing 14-13 in 2018-19, transitioned from the NAIA to the NCAA in the early 2000s. The Tigers have reached the NCAA tournament twice, most recently during the 2015-16 season. Before that, they were a force in the NAIA under Dan Williams, who won 375 games in 17 seasons as head coach and was inducted into the school’s athletic hall of fame in 2019. (Coincidentally, Williams was JP Baron’s freshman basketball coach at La Salle College High School.)

Baron said that the commute from his home in the Blue Bell area to Holy Family is about 45 minutes compared to the old commute to Gwynedd Mercy that was about 20 minutes. During that time, Baron has a chance to talk with his children, reflect upon his time at Gwynedd Mercy and think about what he is trying to build at Holy Family.

He certainly has lots of memories from his 25 years at Gwynedd Mercy. He said that when he sat down to write his formal resignation letter it was much more difficult than he anticipated.

“I wanted to make sure I covered everything,” Baron said.

He said that the letter began as follows: “Gwynedd Mercy was far more than a workplace. It has been my home.”

He is now at a new home.

“I am most excited about seeing what we can do to get the same family culture at Holy Family that we were able to create at Gwynedd Mercy for so many years,” Baron said. “We are trying to recreate something we had.”