By Dom Langello
The secret weapon to Western New England athletics programs can be found easily if you walk into the AHLC and listen out for the sound of blaring music and slamming medicine balls. If you follow that sound, you’ll find Coach Chris Ferrara, our outstanding strength and conditioning coach for WNE, among one of our 23 outstanding athletic programs that he trains.
In the three years since hiring Ferrara, the Golden Bears have seen remarkable success in athletics. Since his arrival in 2022, WNE has won 11 CCC championships in men’s lacrosse (2022 and 2023), women’s soccer (2022), men’s soccer (2023), women’s basketball (2023, 2024, and 2025), women’s ice hockey (2023 and 2024), softball (2024), and men’s basketball (2025). This success does not come without Ferrara’s relentless dedication to all of his athletes as he tries to make them the best athletes and people as he can.
Ferrar tries to instill a unique culture in his weight room. It’s “controlled chaos,” he said. “I don’t care what sport you play. The intensity of the game you can’t mimic in the weight room; you can’t mimic that on the track. My job is to bring the environment as close as I can to that game-like environment as possible.”
Ferrara comes from a football background, explaining the hard nosed philosophies that he has in his weight room. He was a defensive tackle for Syracuse from 2000-2003, recording 139 total tackles. He was a second-team All-Big East selection in 2003 before being taken by the San Francisco 49ers in the seventh round of the NFL draft, making him the 226th overall pick. The team’s 49ers Webzone webpage described Ferrara in 2004 as “blue-collar type working class defensive tackle that established a renowned presence at Syracuse and carved out an image that resembled that of a psycho running all over the field on a search and destroy mission.”
After his athletic career ended, his career goal shifted to becoming a trainer due to his love of the game. His career in training began in 2014 at Springfield Central High School, where he implemented Division 1-level training programs to improve his athletes’ performance. “If you don’t get to the state championship, I won’t go to your game,” he would tell his high school athletes when they asked him if he would watch them compete. Simple reminders like this make it known to always keep the end goal in mind, and that end goal is in every one of his athlete’s heads as they try to push themselves through their last rep.
He was confident when taking the job here at WNE, Ferrara knew college athletes would be more mature than high school athletes. “It’s always been a dream to coach at the college level, and I jumped in not knowing what to expect because I am used to having to yell and scream at kids. But here, when I walked in, I knew I might have to raise my voice, I might have to get on them sometimes, but for the most part, all these kids in this room want to get better.”
Ferrara believes that having a shared goal and desire to participate among his athletes is what contributes to a successful program. Juggling every team offered a Western New England University, both men’s and women’s, he has to do extensive preparation for his programs. Coaching everything from football to tennis, he is tasked with training athletes from all sports to do all sorts of different movements. This means he has to create specialized programs for all of his athletes depending on what their sport demands from them. Ferrara explained that he builds all of his programs six months prior to the sports season and that they modify the programs on the fly as needed. Throughout the season, he uses this program to predict and set goals for his athletes’ improvement and make adjustments as necessary. This allows Western New England University athletes to improve over time while not taking an unnecessary toll on their bodies. He also comes up with plans for his athletes to stay in shape over the summer. They upload their workouts through an app called TeamBuildr and send clips to Ferrara when he requires them to.
Ferrara is extremely loved and appreciated by his athletes for how hard he pushes them to improve every day. I spoke with Ja’naz Williams, a football and track & field athlete here at WNE, about some of the qualities that Ferrara possesses that make him so effective. “His intensity is what drives the people around him,” Williams says. “If I didn’t hit the weight I wanted to hit, he reminded me that it wasn’t the end of the world and that I could still hit it. Just because I didn’t hit it at this moment, it doesn’t mean I will never get it. I just have to work a little harder and I have to push myself a lot harder, and that aspect is what makes Ferrara so valuable as a coach.” It is clear from talking with Wiliams and Ferrara how passionate he is about his career. Ferrara takes pride in pushing athletes to reach their goals and to grind out that extra rep at the end of the set.
Mentoring more than 600 athletes, as Ferrara does at WNE, is no easy task. Ferrara, though, is uncommonly dedicated to his job. He leaves his home every day at 3:45 a.m. and often does not get home until 8:00 p.m., something he noted that he cannot do without the help of his family. “I can’t do what I do if they don’t do what they do,” he said. His fiancé is particularly important, he added: “She knows this is my dream to be here, and she supports that wholeheartedly.” Ferrara’s long hours at work – juggling his obligations at WNE, his work at Springfield Central High School, and his private clients – mean that he misses his fiancé for weeks at a time. But he makes a point to have dinner with his family from the end of the first week of May through the beginning of September. “That hour we spend together laughing and joking at the table” is important, he said. “I don’t have that for nine to ten months out of the year. The stuff that I don’t think about is that she has brought more into my life; it’s been a blessing.”
Ferrara’s journey from a Syracuse defensive lineman to the strength and conditioning coach here at WNE embodies leadership and an unwavering commitment to elevating and motivating his athletes. The impact that he has made on all of our university’s athletes has gone unnoticed for far too long. His direct impact on WNE’s consistent athletic success is undeniable, and his philosophies and motivation are things that will stick with his athletes for the rest of their lives. Next time you find yourself in the AHLC, be sure to say hi to Ferrara and ask him what he hit in the gym this morning.
