Summer months bring new faces to UMAC coaching positions
ST. PAUL -- As colleges and universities across the country prepare to see new faces in August with their incoming freshman and transfer students, some student-athletes will meet new coaches when they report for camp. That is the case at four Upper Midwest Athletic Conference (UMAC) institutions, where new head coaches will hit the ground running in their new positions.
Crown College will welcome two new coaches as Art Busha and Luke Herbert lead the Storm’s men’s soccer and men’s basketball teams. Busha arrives in St. Bonifacius, Minn. after leaving his Director of Coaching role for the Ahwatukee Soccer Club in Phoenix, Ariz. Herbert assumes the men’s basketball duties after serving as the top assistant coach at Covenant College in Lookout Mountain, Ga. Herbert is a Minnesota native, having graduated from Park Rapids High School and Minnesota State University-Moorhead.
Northland College took a two-headed approach to its women’s soccer coaching vacancy, and Anne Whiting and Olaf Kirsten were chosen as the right people for the job. Both coaches are coming from varsity high school positions while Whiting has assisted with the Northland program in past years. Kirsten is a Northland alumnus and a member of the institution’s hall of fame.
Aaron Kahl was recently named the sixth head women’s basketball coach in Northwestern College history. Kahl’s career has taken him across the Midwest, as he joins the Eagles after a three-year coaching stint at Dakota Wesleyan University in Mitchell, S.D. Prior to his time at Dakota Wesleyan, Kahl spent six years as an assistant at Gustavus Adolphus College.
The 2010 season brings a shuffle to the soccer coaching staff at Presentation College. Bob Schuchardt returns to Aberdeen, S.D. to coach the Presentation women’s squad after having coached both the Saints men’s and women’s teams in their inaugural season of 2001. Schuchardt coached the PC women’s team for five years and the men’s for seven years. Evan Ormand, a former Saints goalkeeper, takes over the head men’s position after working as an assistant coach for the past two years. Jeremy Reigle will assume the head men’s basketball and head men’s golf coaching duties after stops at William Penn University, Vennard College and Rockford College.
While Presentation’s newly-announced football team won’t take the field until 2011, the Saints have three coaches in place including head coach Andy Carr. Carr, the institution’s first-ever football coach, crossed the Minnesota-South Dakota border after a successful run as the assistant head coach at Southwest Minnesota State University in Marshall, Minn. Car has hired assistants Kenny Cushing and Powell Chee to help develop his team, which will immediately be eligible for a UMAC championship upon taking the field.
UMAC teams will begin their 2010 game schedules the first week of September, with several teams competing on Sept. 1.