Former 'Canes AlfanoStJohn, McIntyre, Quinlan Are All Transferring To New Colleges

When the NCAA officially eased its transferring policies earlier this year — allowing all players the ability to transfer once in their careers and be immediately eligible — it presented college student-athletes an opportunity to create a better situation for themselves, if they chose to do so.

The result of bringing the end of the longstanding rule from the 1960s that penalized athletes in certain sports by forcing them to miss their first season at their new school, was thousands of athletes entering what has quickly become known as the “transfer portal,” a system in which athletes who are looking to move on from their current school can enter and be free to talk to any other school.

Jaden AlfanoStJohn, Liam McIntyre and Nolan Quinlan — all graduates of Westhampton Beach High School who continued their careers in college — entered the “portal” this past offseason, and starting this fall each will have different homes for the foreseeable future.

AlfanoStJohn was the last of three straight Hurricanes — along with McIntyre and Dylan Laube before him — to lay claim to the ultimate prize in Suffolk County, the Carl A. Hansen Award, which is named after the longtime Westhampton Beach coach and athletic director and given to the most valuable player in the county. After graduating from Westhampton Beach in 2019, AlfanoStJohn joined McIntyre at Long Island University, but he will be transferring to SUNY Cortland this fall to join the Red Dragons football team.

McIntyre, an aforementioned Hansen Award winner in 2018, his senior year, was one of many key players who led the Hurricanes to Suffolk County and Long Island Championships as a linebacker/fullback in 2017, and was an All-American wrestler to boot. He is transferring from LIU to Lehigh University in Bethlehem, Pennsylvania.

Quinlan, who also played a key role for the ’Canes in that memorable 2017 season as a wide receiver, is transferring from Wagner College on Staten Island to the University of Louisiana-Monroe.

Each student-athlete had their reasons for transferring, but at the end of the day it was for what they felt was a better situation. McIntyre was named a Hero Sports freshman All-American after starting all 10 games at linebacker for LIU, ranking second on the team with 66 tackles. But various changes at LIU that McIntyre didn’t want to discuss publicly, led to him deciding to transfer, and he’s exited to be heading to Lehigh.

“I’m super pumped about it,” he said. “I’m exited about what’s coming next. I know a lot of the guys [at LIU] are moving on, a lot of the coaches are moving on as well for greater opportunities and I wish them all the best.”

McIntyre said that officially transferring to Lehigh took a while because of Lehigh’s stringent academic process, particularly of transferring credits. Once that was all ironed out, though, he knew he’d be heading to Lehigh, which was one of his top choices out of what were a number of possible landing spots.

McIntyre called the transferring process “pretty crazy,” but entering the portal presented him with a lot of opportunities and he thinks Lehigh presented him with the best one.

“The coaching staff has been unbelievable throughout this process,” he said. “Everything they could possibly do for me they did. They gave me a great offer, they have a big need for my position, and Lehigh is a high academic school. They set their eyes on me and they told me they were getting me or nobody, there was no backup plan for them, and they made that known.

“My parents have been super, super supportive, and I couldn’t have done this without them and without the great support system that I have,” he added. “You feel like when you go to college that you’re leaving behind your teams, your friends and everything, but everyone at Westhampton, the entire coaching staff there, they were all helping me throughout the process and it’s good to know that they all still have my back.”

Westhampton Beach varsity head coach Bryan Schaumloffel said that the main thing for all of his players was that they picked a college that was going to support them the best and where they were going to have the best playing experience. Lehigh checked all of those boxes for McIntyre, and then some.

“There were a lot of great schools, and a lot of great academic schools, interested in Liam,” Schaumloffel said. “I know I spoke to Rutgers quite a bit about Liam, but when Liam told me he was going with Lehigh, I thought that was pretty impressive. Lehigh is an impressive school. Aside from the academic excellence, it has a great fan base and he’s going to play high caliber, high quality football to go along with getting a high quality education.”

Tom Gilmore, head coach of Lehigh, said that when one of his linebackers decided to transfer to one of the service academies, that opened up a hole on his roster, and that McIntyre fit into what he was looking for on his team, which was a versatile linebacker who can play both inside and outside. With McIntyre having bulked up a bit lately, he’ll play inside, but he played outside at LIU, and Gilmore thinks he’ll fit in right away and should see the field quite a bit.

“First and foremost, Liam is a very athletic linebacker who plays on the outside, but we think he can play inside,” he explained. “With his athleticism, he’s a guy that can play any three linebacker positions and be a very productive player. He’s been growing and getting bigger with training and becoming a much more mature player than he was coming out of high school, so we feel he’s a guy who can come in and contribute right away.”

Similar to McIntyre, with a few internal changes taking place at Wagner, Quinlan saw transferring somewhere else as an opportunity to get himself into a situation he felt more comfortable with. He entered the portal April 20, and not even a month later on May 19, Quinlan found his new home in Louisiana, where he’s already been training since June 1.

Quinlan said there were a number of schools that were interested in him, including the University of New Hampshire where Dylan Laube plays, but Monroe wound up being the better choice for him academically so that’s where he chose to go.

“I was definitely surprised,” about how many teams were interested in him, Quinlan said. “Coming out of high school, I wasn’t that widely recruited for football, but after talking to some coaches, they assured me I wouldn’t be left with nothing. But I was kind of shocked by how many schools were interested, I mean, I’ve never been to Louisiana or a lot of the other schools that were interested.”

“It’s definitely a culture shock compared to Staten Island,” he added. “There is a bayou running through the campus here. The biggest thing is the weather. It’s been, like, 95 degrees here every single day, and I’m in the most northeast Louisiana. So it’s a lot different than what I’m used to, but I like it down here.”

Quinlan had a breakout sophomore season in 2019 in which he had 33 catches for 346 yards and a touchdown as a tight end for Wagner, leading him to be named a 2020 First Team Preseason All-NEC. After just two games, Wagner’s 2020 season was cut short due to COVID, like so many teams across the country, so he wasn’t able to build upon that season. But Mike DiAngelo, the tight ends and inside receiving coach at Louisiana-Monroe, likes what Quinlan brings to the table.

“Just off the film, right away, obviously it’s the size and his versatility,” he said. “But then when I dug a little bit deeper into his whole career, you see in high school he was a receiver and he’s probably put on 30 pounds since then. And he played basketball and lacrosse and you could see that he was carrying that weight pretty well, so he was a natural-born athlete. I saw that he had great hands and size, so he is going to cause mismatches. And he had the game experience. I don’t care at any level you play at, game experience is irreplaceable, so with his intangibles, plus he’s smart kid, he’s got good grades, always had good grades, he’s a good kid, he married up with us pretty well.”

AlfanoStJohn’s reason for transferring was simple — he just wanted to get some playing time. After a breakout season during his senior year that netted the Hansen Award, AlfanoStJohn chose to go to LIU, and although he traveled with the team for all of its away games and was available to play every game in 2019, he never did.

So when the offseason came, AlfanoStJohn said he “opened his eyes” and became comfortable with the idea of playing for a Division II or Division III program after wanting to play for a big Division I program going into college.

Cortland was the only Division III school AlfanoStJohn looked at, but it had everything he was looking for

“Everyone who I spoke to about the school had great things to say about it, and every single one of their coaches was on my visit, so it was clear that they wanted me,” he explained. “The facilities, the campus are just amazing and it just felt right.

“Overall, I’m just trying to be happy,” he added. “Trying to be happy and trying to do great on the field and really try and make an impact as soon as I get there.”

Curt Fitzgerald, head coach at Cortland, said that while he runs a Division III program, many of the things surrounding it, such as facilities, are of Division I caliber, which is what makes it stand out for someone like AlfanoStJohn, who is coming over from a Division I program.

“I think he’s got the perfect blend of size and speed and is an ideal fit for us and we’re excited about his versatility,” he said. “He’s a home-run hitter with the size to run with power and he can be a great back. I think he certainly has the talent to compete with anyone we have. In a competitive environment it’s hard to predict exactly where and how much time he’ll get, but I think he has a great chance to make an impact and make a great career here.”