After a series of unfortunate events, including an entire year lost to COVID-19 and the untimely—and still unexplained—passing of Boris Posavec, a one-time top Terrier performer, there’s finally good new to report about St. Francis Brooklyn men’s water polo. One of the Northeast’s best men’s programs has a new leader.

Earlier today, a presser from the college’s athletic department announced that SFC Athletic Director Irma Garcia has named Ilija Duretic, a 2017 graduate of the school, as the program’s new head coach.

In her statement, Garcia—who has seen five coaches come and go in the decade since longtime Terrier helmsman Carl Quigley stepped down in 2009 after a forty-year coaching career—enthusiastically welcomed back a one-time star SFC athlete.

“We are excited to welcome Ilija back to the Terrier family as our new men’s water polo head coach,” Garcia said. “Ilija embodies the Franciscan mission as he is a servant leader; who achieved great success as a member of the men’s water polo team during his time as a student-athlete. He is a great role model for all of our student-athletes, and we look forward to an exciting season this Fall.”

That the Terrier men are playing at all is cause for joy among the St. Francis faithful. Like fellow Northeast Water Polo Conference (NEWPC) members Brown, Harvard and Princeton—and Wagner in the Metro Atlantic Athletic Conference (MAAC)—in the 2020-21 academic year the college’s administration decided to forgo competition for both its men’s and women’s programs, due to the impact of the COVID-19 pandemic.

Duretic will be taking over the program from Bora Dimitrov, his one-time teammate who compiled a 41-43 record over three seasons, including 20-11 in NEWPC play. The Terriers were in contention for a league title in both 2017 and 2018 but fell to eventual conference winner Harvard in the 2017 playoffs in and then to eventual NEWPC champs Princeton the following year.

Besides the challenge of restarting a program whose roster is primarily populated by international athletes, Duretic must contend with a different rebuilding challenge: the imminent sale of the St. Francis campus. In a press release from May 18th of this year, SFC President Miguel Martinez-Saenz announced a bold plan to move the school’s entire campus from its congested Brooklyn Heights location to a modern corporate facility approximately seven blocks away. The catch? There’s no clear plan for relocating the college’s 19 Division I athletic teams, the biggest hurdle of which is securing time in a competition-ready aquatics facility for men’s and women’s water polo and men’s and women’s swimming.

This is an in-the-future concern for Duretic, who is likely just happy to have an opportunity to coach collegiate polo. An accomplished athlete, the Serbian-born attacker played high school water polo at Sportska Gimnazija Beograd, where his team claimed four Junior National Champion titles. A member of the Serbian Junior National Team—the feeder program for the world’s best men’s water polo team—in 2013 as a freshman he helped the Terriers to their last NCAA Men’s Water Polo Tournament. In the Terriers’ 6-5 NCAA play-in game win over UC San Diego, Duretic registered a hat-trick.

He has coached age group polo in Brooklyn as well as high school and collegiate club polo in Florida, where he was the head boys’ and girls’ water polo coach at Saint Andrew’s High School in Boca Raton, Florida from 2019-20.

In assuming leadership of one of the East’s top programs, the newly minted collegiate head coach pointed out how special it is to returns where he enjoyed great success.

“[I]t’s an honor and privilege to come back to be the men’s water polo head coach at my alma mater, a place that’s a big part of who I am today,” said Duretic.