Robert Morris AD Chris King, ‘Talented’ Group of HCs Led Department to Most Success Since Joining Horizon League

MOON TWP, Pa. — They better start making some room in the trophy cases here at Robert Morris.

After not winning a single Horizon League championship, across any university-sanctioned sport, since the university joined as a full-time member in 2021, the athletic department witnessed four of its programs bring home Horizon League titles over the course of the 2024-25 academic year.

Not only that, the athletic department enjoyed great success in sports that were played outside of the Horizon League.

The men’s lacrosse team added the department’s fifth conference title of the year as they won the Northeast Conference title while the Cross Country Track and Field team won two gold medals at the Horizon League Outdoor Championships.

Now, those were just the championship programs. There were a handful of other programs that elevated their talent and success over the last year.

The women’s basketball team enjoyed a historic season under a first-year head coach, the women’s lacrosse team was seconds away from winning the university’s sixth conference title of the year while many athletes and coaches won individual awards throughout their respective sports.

Robert Morris Sports Now managed to catch up with athletic director Chris King this week to discuss the department’s success over the past year.

King, a very prideful and hands on athletic director, was hired at Robert Morris near the end of the NEC-era at the school.

While he managed to see the 2019-20 men’s basketball team win the conference title just two days before the world shut down due to the pandemic, there were not been many bright spots within the department since that point.

“I think anytime that you make a move from one conference to another conference, you’re going to have generally a higher level of competition across a majority of your sports,” King said. “You are going to have a new set of rivals, increased challenges, so you got to elevate your performance and strive for greater heights.”

What made the fortunes change for Robert Morris athletics over the last few years then? Well, that would be the strong, dedicated group of head coaches that the university hired under King.

“We are very fortunate to have a very strong, talented coaching staff,” King said. “We’ve hired a couple of really good, young head coaches here in the last two or three years that have really elevated each of our sport programs.”

While some of the head coaches such as men’s basketball head coach Andy Toole and softball head coach Jexx Varner have been around the town for a couple of years now, King made some impressive hires over that span including women’s basketball head coach Chandler McCabe and women’s soccer head coach Michelle Rick.

The coaching hires were undoubtedly a huge reason for many of the turnarounds this past year but it also just took time for many of the programs to adjust to a new conference and new competition, especially in today’s NIL world.

With it all finally meshing together this past year, King credited its group of leaders as to what helped guide them through the transition period.

“I think the success that you saw this academic year suggest that out sports programs successfully navigated through this transition and now they are thriving in a new environment and new conference,” King stated. “We got some really good, talented coaches who understand the recruiting landscape, that understand today’s generation and I think they’ve done a tremendous job of putting together a very talented group of athletes.”

The coaches success goes beyond just an individual or a department level as they managed to hire a group of coaches that cares for each other.

You can open X anytime and see coaches from the same university extending congratulations to one another but the family-like bond between the coaches at Robert Morris sets them apart from the crowd.

While King knew he hired a solid batch of leaders, even he didn’t know they would support each other as strongly as they do.

King stated that only recently, at the Outdoor Championships this past week, he discovered the fraternity that was started between all of the head coaches after Track and Field head coach Bryan Delsite showed him the group text thread that they are all apart of.

“They got their head coaches thread and [Coach Delsite] showed me how they support each other,” King started. “He showed me after the softball team won the title, all of the text messages that the coaches sent to Coach Varner in supporting him but they’ve been doing that all year and they’ve got an incredible group. They got a great fraternity amongst themselves and they rally around each other.”

The text thread may have been news to King but the bond between all of the coaches was evident to him as he continued on with a story about how the university goes about hiring a new head coach.

“The interesting thing is when we interview a coaching candidate, I have a pool of coaches that at lunchtime, they take out the candidates to lunch to get to know them better and to see if they are a good fit for this department,” King said. “They give me incredible feedback but I always seem to get the ‘Well, why didn’t I get invited to lunch this time around?’ because they are all jockeying for it now and they are excited to be part of bringing in that next rockstar head coach.”

“That’s what you want as an athletic director,” King continued. “You want to be able to have that strong group of core values within the department and again, it starts at the top with the head coaches and to makes its way down to our student athletes and everything that they rally around together is what made us a really strong department this year.”

Long story short, the success that was displayed this past year was the result of multiple years of reconstructing and navigating that the department went through under King since his arrival in Moon Township.

Department RECORD for @RMUAthletics !!! #BobbyMo pic.twitter.com/69uj6SuEuN

— Chris King (@ChrisKingAD) May 10, 2025

While he credited the group of coaches under him for the success at Robert Morris, King got one thing right, which is that it all starts at the top. What he left out is that the person at the top of the chain is nobody but himself.

So, as great as this past year was for all of the coaches and student athletes, there was nobody more proud than himself.

“When the women’s cross country team won the school’s first ever Horizon League Championship in any sport, I was sitting in the football press box on game day and Coach Delsite called and told me that we just won the championship, I mean I got up in the box and started jumping up and down, I was so excited,” King recalled.

With King at the helm and his hand-picked leaders under him, Robert Morris athletics is in a great spot and should be able to continue setting new records and winning more championships for the foreseeable future.

While the future is still to be written and the past is set in stone, like King harped on, the 2024-25 academic year will go down as one of the best in the history of the Robert Morris athletic department.