Stonehill Skyhawks Football

From the Knights to the Skyhawks

Football at Stonehill, a Catholic college in Easton, Massachusetts, began not as a varsity sport but as a student club. Paul Finn, class of 1971, was a founding member of that club side, the Knights, in 1970, serving as captain and playing left tackle and right end on defence. Finn later described putting together the first season with a full schedule as one of the most enduring accomplishments of his life, and in September 2025 the college named its head-coaching position after him, the first endowed coaching post in Stonehill Athletics.

The varsity programme proper was established in 1988 as an independent, competing in NCAA Division III until 1996. The team played then under the name Chieftains, and won three Eastern Collegiate Football Conference titles in 1989, 1991 and 1995. A move to Division II followed in 1997, first in the Eastern Football Conference and then, from 2001, in the Northeast-10, where the programme would spend the next two decades. The Chieftains name was retired in 2005 in favour of the Skyhawks.

The Division II era produced one conference honour, a share of the NE10 regular-season championship in 2013. A 13-0 win over Southern Connecticut State in 2012 was the programme's first victory over that opponent in fifteen years and its first shutout of them in twelve. Across its history Stonehill has produced three consensus All-Americans.

The Division I gamble

In April 2022 Stonehill announced it had accepted an invitation to join the Northeast Conference, beginning a four-year transition to NCAA Division I. For football that meant the Football Championship Subdivision, the second tier of the college game, and a period during which the Skyhawks could play a full NEC schedule but were ineligible for the conference title and the FCS play-offs until the reclassification was complete.

The first Division I game came on 3 September 2022, a 33-30 double-overtime win at Bloomsburg. A week later Stonehill beat Post 76-0 at home, and on 1 October the Skyhawks took their first NEC scalp, 24-20 over Duquesne. The inaugural season finished 4-5 overall and 2-5 in the conference. The following year the team improved by two conference wins, going 4-3 in NEC play and tying for second in the standings, though the transition rules meant that placing carried no reward beyond the record book.

Eli Gardner's long tenure

The man who has steered the programme through all of this is Eli Gardner, who holds the Paul Finn '71 Head Football Coach title. Gardner joined the staff of the previous head coach, Robert Talley, in 2009 as special teams co-ordinator and linebackers coach, ran the defence from 2011 to 2013, and served as associate head coach in 2014 and 2015 before being promoted to the top job. The 2022 season was his sixth in charge, which makes 2026 his tenth.

His best year was 2021, the final Division II season, when Stonehill went 8-2. He was named D2Football.com NE10 Coach of the Year in 2019, the season in which Justin Felder became the programme's first Harlon Hill Trophy candidate, the award for Division II's top player. Gardner's overall record entering 2026 stood at 41-52 across 93 games, with a 31-39 mark in conference play. On 5 September 2026 at New Haven he coached his 95th game, making him the programme's all-time leader in games coached, a figure that surpasses Talley and marks him as the longest-serving head coach of the varsity era.

2025: the first season that counted

The 2025 campaign was the first in which Stonehill was eligible for the NEC title and the FCS post-season. The coaches' poll picked the Skyhawks to finish last. They did not, but the year was uneven: 4-8 overall and 3-4 in the conference, with the new offensive co-ordinator Dan Herbert in his first season and Kyle Jones running the defence for a fifth.

The wins tell the shape of the team. Stonehill beat Maine 13-10 on the road on 13 September, held LIU to a field goal in a 10-3 Homecoming victory on 27 September, won 22-15 at Mercyhurst on 25 October and closed the year at home with a 20-10 win over Saint Francis on 22 November, a game in which Anthony Busa made twelve tackles and an interception and Domenic Scalese kicked a season-long 48-yard field goal. The defeats were heavier: a 12-7 loss at Sacred Heart to open, 42-26 at home to Lafayette, and a 47-7 hammering at Yale on 18 October.

Off the field, the season brought the formal naming of the head-coaching post for Paul Finn on 20 September 2025, before the home game against Pennsylvania, and the installation of a new scoreboard at W.B. Mason Stadium. Quarterback Jack O'Connell finished the year with 1,875 passing yards and 15 touchdowns, and now sits tenth on the programme's all-time list with 23 career touchdown passes.

September 2026: an early statement

The 2026 schedule, released on 2 March, is the programme's 39th season of football: twelve games, five of them at home, seven in the NEC. The NEC coaches picked Stonehill seventh in their preseason poll on 3 August. The headline fixtures are away at Massachusetts on 19 September and at Ohio on 26 September, the first times the Skyhawks will have faced Football Bowl Subdivision opposition.

The opener did not go to plan. Bryant, of the CAA, came to Easton on 29 August for a Saturday-night kick-off and won 24-6, with Stonehill's points coming from two Scalese field goals of 36 and 29 yards. O'Connell completed 19 of 30 passes for 202 yards, and Alijah Turner racked up 160 all-purpose yards, 109 of them on kick-off returns, the first Skyhawk past 150 in a game since 2024.

A week later, in the conference opener at New Haven's Ralph F. DellaCamera Stadium on 5 September, the picture changed. Stonehill trailed to a 21-yard field goal inside the first three minutes and then scored 21 unanswered points before half-time: Aidan Garrett on a 25-yard pass from O'Connell, Garrett again from a yard out, and Torance Washington Jr. on a 31-yard reception with under two minutes left in the half. O'Connell was 14 of 18 for 192 yards and two touchdowns without an interception, Shane Eason ran for 82 yards on 15 carries, and Mo Seide led the defence with nine tackles and a 76-yard interception return. New Haven, which had beaten Marist 22-21 the previous week, went 0 for 10 on third down. It was the first meeting between the two as Division I opponents; the Chargers had won the previous five, the last of them 42-20 in Easton in 2021, and Gardner had entered the game 1-5 against them.

The win leaves Stonehill 1-1 overall and 1-0 in the NEC heading into a 6pm kick-off at New Hampshire on 12 September, ahead of the two FBS trips. The remaining home dates are Duquesne on 17 October, Mercyhurst on 31 October, Central Connecticut State, the defending NEC champion, on 7 November, and Wagner on Senior Day, 21 November.

Saturday at W.B. Mason Stadium

Home games are played at W.B. Mason Stadium, a 2,400-capacity multi-purpose ground with a FieldTurf surface and an eight-lane 400-metre track around it. The playing surface is named Timothy J. Coughlin Memorial Field after a 1980 graduate who died on 11 September 2001. A single grandstand runs the length of the field, with moulded plastic seats in the central sections and backless metal bleachers elsewhere, plus standing room along the southern edge.

Stadium Journey visited on 15 November 2025 and gave the experience a 2.86 out of 5. The reviewer noted that the game-day presentation had grown more polished since the 2022 move to Division I, with fan-engagement activities, cheerleaders, and the mascot Ace running dance contests with children. Average attendance since the elevation was put at around 2,000, with a habit worth knowing: fans tend to arrive late and tailgate until kick-off. A Bon Appetit concessions tent serves stadium standards and rotating specials, and a beer garden near the north end zone pours Shovel Town Brewery microbrews including a collaboration beer called Hillhaus.

Practicalities are straightforward. Gates open 90 minutes before kick-off, parking in the campus lots is free, the beer garden closes at the end of the third quarter, and general admission was listed at 15 dollars, with seniors and students at 10. All home and NEC games stream on NEC Front Row, with selected fixtures carried on NESN+ and NESN Nation.