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Feb. 16—MITCHELL — Alex Kretzschmar can hardly believe his new title: Dakota Wesleyan head football coach.
It was just three years ago, after all, that Kretzschmar phoned Ross Cimpl, offering his services as a volunteer staff member for the Tigers.
Fast forward to Monday morning, when Cimpl informed Kretzschmar that after 12 years as DWU’s head coach he was taking a promotion to be the Tigers’ new athletic director and that he was hiring Kretzschmar to replace him, the Wisconsin native finally had the head coaching job he had long coveted.
“It’s still a little surreal,” said Kretzschmar, who was officially announced as DWU’s football coach on Tuesday afternoon. “I’ll wake up in the morning and go about my routine and I’ll be like, ‘Oh wow, I’m not just the offensive coordinator anymore.'”
According to Kretzschmar, who has spent 12 seasons as an assistant at schools across the country, including the last two at DWU, his promotion to head coach was not a premeditated decision by the university. When athletic director Jon Hart left for his new position at the University of Sioux Falls at the end of last year, the plan was for Cimpl to be the athletic director only in the interim, then return to coaching. However, in recent weeks, Cimpl approached Kretzschmar about potentially taking on the coaching position.
“I had talked with Ross once or twice before and he said, ‘Hey, this could go this way, it’s nothing for sure, I don’t want to get your hopes up or anything like that,'” Kretzschmar said. “He asked me at one point ‘I know you have aspirations of potentially being a head coach one day, would this be something you’d be interested in?’ And I said ‘Yeah, definitely’ but it was still to the point that he wasn’t sure if he was ready to be done coaching.”
Once Cimpl, who was unavailable for comment for this story prior to…
Source link : https://sports.yahoo.com/volunteer-head-coach-alex-kretzschmar-004600931.html
Author : The Daily Republic, Mitchell, S.D.
Publish date : 2024-02-17 00:46:00
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