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Contributed by Mike Greengarten

Mike Greengarten chatting with soccer player Carli Lloyd. Both attended Rutgers, and Lloyd is now an Olympic Gold Medalist and FIFA World Cup champion.

Nine years ago, Mike Greengarten was celebrating amongst his best friends on the baseball diamond after winning the 2010 Bergen County Championship for Pascack Valley.  

He described this moment as the highlight of his PV career. However, playing shortstop and second base for PV coach Will Lynch was not enough to satisfy his athletic craving. When Greengarten was at PV, he was heavily involved in the sports programs. He played numerous sports, including baseball, soccer, and track.

“I loved PV sports. I played soccer for [Roy] Nygren and [Al] Coleman. I played baseball for Coach Lynch. I ran track for [Bob] Buesser. I really played as many sports as I could.”

Greengarten also said that he has a connection with PV Principal Tom DeMaio, former Athletic Director Thomas Gattoni, former football coach Craig Nielsen, among other teachers and coaches. 

After Greengarten’s four years at Pascack Valley, he attended Rutgers University in New Brunswick as a student which would help him to kickstart his career. While he was at Rutgers he interned in various departments to gain knowledge and experience in the fields he planned on pursuing.

Following his years in college, Greengarten would use the connections he had built up as an undergraduate at Rutgers and the skills he had learned at PV to help land him a job. 

Greengarten now has the Director of Marketing position at Rutgers. As a result, he plays an integral role at every home game for both the men’s basketball team and the football team.

For home basketball games, Greengarten plans out the activities within the arena including the video board, giveaways, and halftime shows. Then, for the football games he is responsible for all of the on-field production. This includes telling the team when to take the field and run out of the tunnel. On top of this, he is also in charge of the posting content to the team’s social media accounts days prior to a game.

Greengarten enjoys many aspects of his job.

“Being able to travel and go to many Big Ten [Conference] institutions has been a lot of fun,” Greengarten said. “The people I work with are tremendous, the students are tremendous, the fans are awesome and I get to work with all of them so I’m really lucky.”

Greengarten attributes a lot of his success in his job to the team that works with at Rutgers. He has received high praise for his work ethic and his character from his coworkers.

“Mike is always the hardest worker in the room,” said Assistant Director of Marketing, Evelyn Falkof. “He takes on any project, and puts 150% effort into everything. He is always thinking of how he can make Rutgers Athletics better each day.”

Greengarten has helped to market Rutgers and their sports programs. He tries to generate fan interest, despite the 1-11 record from the football team and a 14-17 record from the basketball team.

“For us it has always been about getting people to our events, making sure they’re entertained while they’re at our events, and then finding ways to bring them back,” said Assistant Athletic Director of Marketing, Rob Roselli. “And I think Mike checks all three boxes there.”  

Even though Greengarten isn’t stealing bases or scoring goals on the fields at Pascack Valley anymore, he has taken various lessons he learned in high school, and incorporates them into his job at Rutgers.

“You have to be able to work as a team, work as a group,” Greengarten said. “You can’t just be a lone wolf. You have to have that team mentality, and I learned that at PV.”