As cornerbacks coach Jeff Sejour ’06 surveyed the Washington Commanders locker room this summer, he was particularly struck by the tight-knit, brotherly dynamic.
“They have a guy DJing, there’s music playing, guys are talking, laughing, just across the board,” Sejour said. “Once the music stops, Coach [Dan] Quinn is addressing the team, and they were on the edge of their seats, paying attention, locked in.”
Sejour experienced this during his work with the Bill Walsh Diversity Coaching Fellowship this summer, a program established to give minority coaches valuable experience at the professional level in training camps. The Commander’s winning culture was one of many lessons Sejour said he took to heart.
Taking on different roles with the Commanders, Sejour worked with the special teams, presented information to players and job shadowed. Commanders head coach Dan Quinn’s emphasis on fresh perspectives particularly stood out to Sejour.
“Every single coach has a voice,” Sejour said. “It was always an assistant coach designated, so the team got to hear everybody’s voice. You could tell from a cultural standpoint, they genuinely care.”
Becoming the third current Lafayette coach to participate in the fellowship, Sejour follows inside linebackers coach Andrew Seumalo and running backs coach Anthony Johnson in 2024, also with the Commanders.
A two-sport athlete — defensive back and Patriot League long jump champion in track and field — Sejour said he did not always plan on coaching. He trained for Haiti’s national team for three years before his career was cut short by injury. After considering a career in medicine, Sejour returned to the gridiron and coached for 15 years before landing the job on College Hill in 2022.
Sejour said his experience at the fellowship built on a leadership conference at the Naval Academy he attended in January. He emerged from the two experiences with a reframed approach to coaching and new ideas to implement, including gauging feedback from players through a Google Form.
“One of the things they stressed to me was about being more positive and encouraging,” Sejour said. “It’s my way of giving them a voice, but also being able to celebrate with them. They decided who we wanted to be as a room.”
Sophomore cornerback Xavier Johnson spoke positively of Sejour’s new coaching implementations.
“He just let us do what we wanna do, really, but make sure we’re doing the right thing,” he said. “We see something, we just go do it, and he asks for feedback on what we saw.”
Head coach John Troxell highlighted the fellowship’s benefits for the Leopards program.
“Jeff got exposed to all facets of coaching, not just a position,” Troxell said. “He got experience coaching special teams down there and seeing how everything runs, so you can steal a lot of ideas just to keep for your program.”
He further identified the valuable, high-level connections Sejour gained as crucial to moving up the coaching ladder.
“It’s a really small network of coaches,” Troxell said. “It’s a great opportunity for them to see that he can coach and who he is as a person.”