Running backs coach Ben Zoeller left to coach quarterbacks at Marietta College. He’ll work under former Wittenberg defensive coordinator Andy Waddle, now head coach at Marietta.
Dan Bauder, Wittenberg’s linebackers coach last season, took the defensive coordinator job at Augustana College (Ill.). He’ll be joined there by Jamaal Everett, who will coach defensive backs, the same group he coached at Wittenberg.
In their place, Fincham has hired Nate Wilson to coach defensive backs, Taylor Housewright to coach wide receivers and Dave Marquis to coach linebackers.
Wilson spent time at North Carolina Wesleyan with Wittenberg’s Jake Bowman and worked as a defensive graduate assistant at Lake Erie College last season.
Housewright played quarterback at Ashland from 2008-12 and was a first-team All-American. He was a graduate assistant at Miami University last season.
Marquis has coached at Randolph Macon, Dayton, Ashland and Kent State. He coached at Dayton at the same time as Wittenberg offensive coordinator Kevin Hoyng.
The coaching changes cause problems in recruiting. Each of the coaches who left was assigned a geographic area to recruit.
Bauder left first, and some of his recruits were dispersed to Zoeller or Everett. So some recruits are now hearing from their third different coach.
Fincham, who coached the Tigers to their fifth North Coast Athletic Conference championship in the last six years in 2014, expects to have a smaller class of recruits in part because of the staff turnover.
“It’s challenging to say the least when you’re dealing with the volume of Division III recruiting,” Fincham said. “It is about relationships. When you lose somebody, we’re still recruiting for Wittenberg, which is not a terrible thing, but you are kind of starting over with the relationships.”
For many years, Fincham had a core of assistant coaches: Waddle, Andy Mitchel, Mark Ewald, Rob Linkhart and Matt Gallatin to name a few. His longest current tenured assistant is defensive ends coach Tom Mescher, who joined the staff in 2005. Defensive coordinator Sean Ross has been with the program since 2007. Defensive tackles coach Dan Smith started coaching in 2008.
“It’s a balancing act,” Fincham said. “Nobody wants to lose quality people. It’s hard to replace quality people. At the same time, too, the days of Bob Rosencrans staying a lifetime as an assistant coach here, those days are gone. We’re not faculty-tracked positions any longer. When we hire people, I would prefer to hire somebody who wants to go upward and onward. You like for them to stay three or four years, and the average lifespan here is about that time.
“We couldn’t make it without the Tom Meschers, the Dan Smiths, the Michael Coopers, the old Mark Ewalds, the guys who come in here as part-time guys who add a tremendous amount of stability to your program.”
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