Zach Leach enters his fourth year as the Assistant Athletic Director for Compliance at Holy Cross in 2024-25.
Leach returns to the The Hill after a three year stint of the Director of NCAA Compliance at the University of Massachusetts - Lowell. While in Lowell, Leach oversaw the daily maintenance of all institutional processes through ARMS compliance software, managed operations related to student-athlete eligibility including transcript evaluations, Eligibility Center processing, NLI processing, administration coding and cooperation with admissions, academics and international services. He also conducted NCAA bylaw research and filed interpretations, waivers and violations while he worked with student-athletes on required forms and assisted the financial aid office in scholarship management, transfer process and academic issues.
From August 2017 to May 2018, Leach was an Athletic Compliance Resident at Holy Cross where he tracked and updated rosters, athletic participation and recruiting using JumpForward software. He also updated internal athletic department policies as well as tracking and updating NCAA bylaw proposals. Leach worked in-person as a compliance supervisor at home football games and the NCAA men's ice hockey regional.
Outside of collegiate athletics, Leach has been Salary Arbitration Consultant for the Boston Bruins for the last eight years and handles other projects directly assigned by the Assistant General Manager. He was also a writer for ProHockeyRumors.com and was a New England Regional Scout for the Vermont Lumberjacks of the EHL.
Leach graduated from the University of Massachusetts - Amherst in 2014 with a degree in Sport Management. He earned his Juris Doctor (J.D.) Sports Law and Entertainment Law Certificate from the University of New Hampshire Franklin Pierce School of Law in 2018.
At UNH, Leach was a Research Assistant to Michael McCann (UNH Law/Sportico) and worked on a book together called "Court Justice: The Inside Story of My Battle Against the NCAA" with Ed O'Bannon. Leach wrote a law review article titled "Dump and Chase: Why the NFL, NBA, and MLB Should Abandon Their Problematic Amateur Draft Age Limits and Rookie Wage Structures and Adopt the Current NHL Model" and was published by the Marquette Sports Law Review in December 2018.
