Former Rider back Andrew Crawford was named to the men's soccer staff as an assistant coach in April, 2022.
No stranger to the Buffalo area, Crawford joined the Golden Griffins program after spending the 2021 season as the head coach of the junior varsity boys soccer program at Williamsville South, where he played as a freshman before spending the next three seasons in the U.S. Development Academy as a member of the Empire Revolution Soccer Academy.
“We are fortunate to be adding AC to our Canisius men’s soccer staff,” Canisius head coach Michael Tanke said. “He is a proven winner on the field, and more importantly, someone who lives our program’s core values in his everyday life. His role will be vital as we continue to develop our way of working on the field, in the classroom and around campus.”
At Rider, Crawford appeared in 62 games and made 29 starts over the course of five seasons (2015-19) on the backline for the Broncs, helping the squad capture Metro Atlantic Athletic Conference Championships in 2015, 2016 and 2018 and make a trio of appearances in the NCAA Tournament.
"After going out of state to play college soccer, it's incredible to be back in Buffalo where there's a big soccer community,” Crawford said. “I'm really looking forward to helping make Canisius competitive in the MAAC again and making the Demske a place where people will look forward to coming to see us play. We've already put in place a good foundation for doing so, but there's still a lot of room for improvement, which is the exciting part."
A four-time MAAC All-Academic Team selection and a 2017 CoSIDA Academic All-District 2 First Team selection, Crawford graduated from Rider with a bachelor’s degree in economics and pre-med in 2019. He received his master’s degree in business administration from Rider in 2021.
