Marshall was in the national spotlight—and caught the attention of a young Jeff Tessier from outside of Providence, Rhode Island.
So, as a 17-year-old in the summer of 1998, Tessier came to Huntington for orientation as a sports management and marketing major. He then reached out to the athletic department to see if they had any internship opportunities.
In the fall, Tessier moved south to Huntington and started as a football equipment manager.
“It was a very popular job, and it was a little intense, but it was fun to work, and you learned a lot and you met a lot of great people along the way,” Tessier said.
During Tessier’s tenure at Marshall he saw two Heisman candidate campaigns, five bowl games, the 13-0 undefeated season of 1999, and Marshall football being ranked 10th in the nation.
“I enjoyed every minute of it,” Tessier said.
For a few years after Marshall, Tessier worked in the equipment room at University of North Carolina Chapel Hill. Then he received a call from another Marshall alum, who was a few years older than him in school, Alex Ferguson, to return home to New England to work in the Ivy League.
Now in his 20th year at Harvard University, Tessier works as the Associate Manager of Equipment Operations and is personally responsible for outfitting student athletes for 22 sports. Tessier said working with student athletes is his favorite part of the job.
“I’ve been here so long working with student athletes, and now I’m building relationships with their kids,” Tessier said.
Tessier isn’t the only former student equipment manager who has seen success in the field—you can equate it to the West Virginia college football coaching cradle, where we’ve seen success from a wide variety of college coaches from the state—Nick Saban, Jimbo Fisher, Lou Holtz and Don Nehlen.
Of the 13 student equipment managers during Tessier’s time at Marshall over 20 years ago, four of them are still leading equipment rooms in Division I athletics across the country including Virginia Tech, Notre Dame and Harvard.
Not only have they stayed in equipment, they’ve stayed in touch, celebrating major life milestones with each other.
Now Tessier’s journey from New England to Huntington and back is coming full circle as Marshall women’s soccer takes on Harvard on Monday, August 26 at 6 p.m. ET on ESPN+.
While he’ll be outfitting the team in crimson, we’ll know at the end of the day he bleeds green.
