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BY JOE PALLADINO REPUBLICAN-AMERICAN

The phone rang twice before the call was answered. The voice on the other end of the line said, "Dan Mara."

Dan Mara? He answers his own phone? No secretary? No call-screening? You can call the president of the Eastern College Athletic Conference direct? These days, you can't get the president of the PTA on the phone, let alone the man at the top of the largest collegiate sports association on the planet, save the NCAA.

Dan Mara, 53, Waterbury resident, former associate vice president for athletics and fitness at Post University, current commissioner of the Central Atlantic Collegiate Conference, member of three regional halls of fame, including the New England Basketball Hall of Fame, and current chairman of the NCAA Sportsmanship and Ethical Conduct Committee, is your new president of the ECAC.

Someone should be answering his phone.

If you are of a certain age, you remember the days when the ECAC was a mover and shaker in college athletics, before the NCAA and powerful athletic conferences took over control of the universe. You might wonder just what does the ECAC do these days? And more importantly, noting that the ECAC central office is on Cape Cod, the first question for Mara is, are you moving to the cape?

"No," he said. "I will still live in Waterbury. I am still the commissioner of the Central Atlantic Collegiate Conference, and our main office is here, in New Haven, right next to Pepe's Pizza."

What a life this guy has. He lunches at Pepe's and hangs out on the cape to do ECAC business. But Dan, what exactly is ECAC business?

"The ECAC is one of those organizations you've known all your life, and to be a part of its board, for me, is a tremendous honor," he said. "But it is an organization that has changed."

Prior to the coming of the Big East, the ECAC, as described by Mara, "was all things to all people. It was a primary conduit to get to postseason play. It is where you got all your officials from. It is where all the athletic directors went for conventions and professional development.

"It was," Mara added, "the front porch of intercollegiate athletics in the East."

That world exists no longer. Conferences now live and breathe all on their own. That does not alter the ECAC's unique place in the collegiate sports world. Long thought of as a New England network, the ECAC consists of 321 Division I, II and III member schools. It encompasses the mighty, like Duke University, and the mini, like Albertus Magnus.

In some ways, the ECAC still is all things to all people. It still runs the IC4A track championships, and rowing and lacrosse conferences, and it still retains its stature and tradition. As Mara pointed out, "Schools like to have the ECAC banner hanging in their gymnasiums."

But now it is time to do more. Mara believes the ECAC can step up its services to its hundreds of eastern colleges. That will be his leadership goal as chairman of the board.

"We will still provide championship opportunities and assignment of officials, but we have to ask ourselves, ‘What else can we do for the membership?' The ECAC has a great staff and a committed board. I think we will make some changes and find ways to keep relative into the next millennium."

And it will all take place from the three most significant places in New England: Wooster Street, Cape Cod and right here, Waterbury, the center of it all.