Fanelli named new Warwick AD

By Bruce Morgan

As a one-time junior varsity basketball coach, Ryan Landis lived a double-edged sword reality.

He wanted his team to do well and for his players to succeed. At the same time, Landis would be nervous about what might happen if one of his star athletes did really tremendous.

“You know what could happen,” he said, “and that is, the varsity coach snags him.”

Landis couldn’t help using that analogy to explain the similarities about something else.

As the current athletic director at Hempfield — a role he previously held at Warwick — Landis saw the writing on the wall with his assistant Matt Fanelli a few years ago.

“I knew I wasn’t going to have him long,” he said. “He was just that good.”

Turns out, Landis was right on the money.

Fanelli left Landisville to become the AD at Eastern York, where he spent the last two school years.

Now he’s on the move again.

At the Warwick school board’s May 5 meeting, Fanelli was approved to be the Warriors’ next athletic director effective July 1, replacing Earl Hazel, who is retiring.

Remarkably, at the young age of 25, he already has an impressive, diversified resume.

In fact, there’s even more to his story than being at Eastern York for two years and working as an assistant AD under Landis from September, 2022 to May, 2024. Prior to that, Fanelli was working as an unpaid intern at Red Lion High School — starting as a 19-year-old — while concurrently earning his degree at York College.

So make no mistake, he has already traveled a lot of miles and done a lot of things.

”I’m young, but young and inexperienced don’t always go together,” said Fanelli a graduate of Exeter Township, where he played football and baseball, in addition to wrestling. “... I’ve been blessed to have the opportunities I’ve had.”

Still, Fanelli has heard the questions. He’s gotten the inquiries wondering if he’s still too wet behind the ears to be an athletic director.

But he takes it all in stride and is ready with an answer. He points out that he has seen the ins and outs of being at 4A, 5A and 6A schools, has coached varsity football at West York and has been involved at every level of sport — from youth all the way up to and including working Super Bowl 54 in Miami and MLB spring training with the Cardinals and Marlins in Jupiter, Fla. as a college freshman.

The latter two were part of his sports management studies at York and being able to take advantage of grants and internships.

“The York College of Penn-

Submitted photo

Matt Fanelli received Warwick school board approval on May 5 to become the Warriors’ new athletic director, replacing Earl Hazel, who is retiring.

sylvania sports management program is absolutely tremendous,” Fanelli said. “I can’t stress how great that program is.”

Secondly, Fanelli has prepared himself to be an athletic director. He has been immersing himself in educational materials, National Interscholastic Athletic Administrators Association (NIAAA) courses, handbooks and the like which will support his decisions.

Coaches’ input is also important to him. “This is what I really push to coaches is, number one, I understand that I’m young,” Fanelli said. “Just hear me out, I’m going to trust you, I need you to trust me and here’s why. I hate going to coaches and saying, ‘This is what we’re going to do,’ or, ‘We need to do things a little bit differently in this way,’ and then it just kind of ends there.

“I try to back it up with here’s my reasons why,” he added, “because whether you’re 25 years old or 75 years old, there’s going to best practices out there that we want to follow. There’s going to be a best way to do things.”

The AD’s approach is an important job requirement, and Landis, a 1993 Warwick grad, believes that Fanelli will be just fine.

“If he’s 25 and he comes (saying), ‘My way, highway,’ and telling head coaches, ‘This is the way you’re going to do this, this is the way you’re going to do that,’ that might be a problem. But there’s no evidence to suggest that’s going to be his approach. You can just see that with the success he’s had on his own at Eastern York ... I think it’s an exciting hire for Warwick.”

Landis, in fact, argues that Fanelli’s age, combined with all of his experiences, actually works to his advantage.

“He brings with him the ability to relate really well with student-athletes and coaches,” Landis said. “... I think he has the right demeanor and work ethic. I think he balances personality with professionalism.”

No doubt, Fanelli absorbed a lot of that professionalism from his dad early in life.

The elder Fanelli did playby- play in local sports radio at 1390 WPAZ in Pottstown. So father and son would often be together soaking up the atmosphere surrounding high school football and hoops games.

“I’d be down on the field pre-game talking to the coaches and wandering around,” Fanelli recalled. “I thought it was the coolest thing in the world. When I’m 4 years old, to me, that is the Super Bowl.”

It left an indelible impression and molded his opinion of what high school sports can be. Then at some point, he realized that those games don’t happen by chance. There are people behind the scenes who make the magic happen.

So Fanelli was connecting the dots, and slowly but surely, his career goals were coming into focus.

He wanted to be an athletic director.

“I knew when I was 10 that I wanted to be an AD,” Fanelli said, “just based on some of my childhood and stuff that my dad did.”

As convinced as he was then about his future vocation, Fanelli is equally certain now about what goes into being a successful AD.

Fanelli knows the best things he can do are to be visible and authentic. Connecting with the student-athletes, coaches and families is at the top of his priority list.

“There’s going to be a ton of stuff that you’re going to have to get done logistically behind the scenes,” he said. “But it’s important that even beyond all of that, you have to find a way to get on those sidelines, talk to the kids and get through the hallways.

“There’s going to be a lot of days, a lot of nights, a lot of hours that you spend around the program,” he added, “so you can’t fake it. You have to be your genuine self and you have to have a genuine care for where you are.”

Surely, Fanelli has seen that side in those whom he considers mentors. Red Lion’s Arnie Fritzius and Kyle Masser definitely fall into that grouping.

“They guided me a tremendous amount,” Fanelli said, “because basically when I was there, they told me, ‘We’ll let you be as hands on as you want to be.’ I think that was the most beneficial thing I could’ve possibly had in this job.”

Landis, meanwhile, is a friend that Fanelli describes as a “tremendous” influence. During their time together at Hempfield, Landis handled more of the administrative side with the parents and hiring, while allowing Fanelli to cover events and do scheduling.

“I can’t really thank him enough for the stuff that he’s done for me and the doors that he’s opened,” Fanelli said of Landis, who will attend his wedding this summer. “He taught me pretty much anything I wanted to know, and from day one, he told me, ‘If you want to be an AD, my goal is to get you there.’” No doubt, Landis, along with Hazel, were among the people who said good things about Lititz to Fanelli when the AD’s position became open. In fact, Fanelli knows a good number of people who have a connection to the town, and he heard nothing but positive comments.

“Everybody has such great things to say about Lititz,” he said. “Everything that I’ve heard about the Lititz community is that they genuinely enjoy the success and being part of Warwick. It’s a closeknit feel is what I’ll say of the community.”

Fanelli has always been fairly local, and of course, he was close by while working in Landisville. Knowing a little bit of Lititz’s background, on top of the fact that he’s getting married to his fiance Sloan in the coming weeks, Fanelli said that Lititz was on a short list of places he wanted to be for the long haul.

“I wasn’t exactly going to any school that may pop up,” he remarked. “There’s a lot of things that drew me to Warwick, but to be very blunt and open, it was the idea that this is where I want to set my family up and be for the next chapter of my life well beyond.”