Georgia Tech added three player-development coaches to work under strength-and-conditioning coach Lewis Caralla. The team announced the hires of Sean Boyle, Thomas Gordon and Gary Wilkins on Thursday.
The team also announced the hire of a new brand manager, Ian McFarland.
Boyle, Gordon and Wilkins replaced the three strength coaches who left Tech following the 2020 season – Zach Reed, Kyle Seger and Edward Thompson -- Seger to Notre Dame, Thompson to Louisiana.
The hires are among the first within the athletic department since athletic director Todd Stansbury imposed a furlough program for staff and refrained from filling vacancies to limit spending as revenues have been heavily impacted by COVID-19.
Boyle was hired from Colorado State, where he was an assistant strength-and-conditioning coach for one year after serving as a graduate assistant strength-and-conditioning coach at Temple in 2019. Boyle is the twin brother of Tech football research-and-analytics coordinator Pat Boyle.
Before his hire at Tech, Gordon worked as a performance coach at Performance 80 Fitness in Detroit for three years. Gordon started 38 games at linebacker and safety at Michigan from 2010-13.
Wilkins is returning to Tech after working on the football video-operations staff for a year in 2018-19. He was a grad assistant strength-and-conditioning coach at Georgia State in 2019 and most recently was director of athletic strength and conditioning at Morehouse for the past year. Wilkins is a graduate of Alcovy High and played collegiately at Furman. Wilkins’ father, also Gary, played for the Yellow Jackets from 1981-84 before a six-year NFL career.
“Sean, Thomas and Gary are home-run additions to our staff,” Caralla said in a statement. “They fit the culture of Georgia Tech football perfectly and bring a ton of knowledge and relatability to our players. I’m very excited for them to get started and know that they will be unbelievably valuable resources for our student-athletes as we continue in the development of our program.”
McFarland replaces Santino Stancato, who came with coach Geoff Collins from Temple to manage Tech’s football brand, largely through its social-media platforms. Stancato left Tech in September to join J1S, a creative agency that Tech has partnered with. McFarland comes to Tech from Louisville, where he was a graphic designer in the Cardinals’ football recruiting office. Before that, he was at Notre Dame for one year (2019) as a social media and design assistant for the football team. He is a graduate of North Texas, where he worked with the football team, including then-assistant coach Tashard Choice, now the Jackets’ running backs coach.
“I’m really excited to bring Ian on in the role of our brand manager,” Collins said in a statement. “Elevating the brand of our program and our amazing student-athletes, while also embracing our location in the city of Atlanta, is so important to everything that we do, and I think Ian will do an outstanding job in this very important role.”
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