As students move back to Otterbein to start the 2014 fall semester, the Otterbein football team, men's and women's soccer, volleyball and cross-country are vigorously preparing for the upcoming seasons as games and meets are right around the corner.
Summer 2014 brought many changes and additions to the athletic department.
New Turf Field and Outdoor Track
After a whole summer of construction, Otterbein is preparing to unveil the results of the turf and track project.
With the new turf field and outdoor track, Memorial Stadium will host football and men’s lacrosse, men’s and women’s soccer and women’s lacrosse games.
The track and field team will also host home track meets starting in the spring of 2016. This will be the first time Otterbein has hosted an outdoor track meet since the 2007 season.
Otterbein athletics’ $2.1 million investment will be revealed just in time for the football team’s homecoming game on Saturday, Sept. 20.
Revamped Track and Field Coaching Staff
With the departure of 43-year head coach Dave Lehman, the track and field team saw a face lift in the coaching staff this past summer.
Otterbein named former John Carroll University track and field coach, Dara Ford, the new head coach. Ford immediately went to work, hiring Bryan Payton for an assistant coaching position, Heath Gibson as the new distance coach and Jessica McClelland as the graduate assistant.
Coaches Austin Curbow and Karl Wunderle will be returning this season. Curbow will keep his title as the strength and conditioning coach and Wunderle will maintain his status as the horizontal jumps and pole vault coach.
Ice Hockey Team
It was announced this summer via Twitter that Otterbein formed a club ice hockey team.
In a campaign headed by juniors Adam McHugh and Alex Morrow, the ice hockey team will begin play in late September with a tentative schedule in the works.
Ice hockey home games will play at the OhioHealth Chiller North off of Route 23 in Lewis Center, Ohio.
New Men's Golf Head Coach
Women’s head golf coach, Brian Booher, will be taking on twice the work this upcoming season as he was named the new men’s head golf coach over the summer.
Booher came to Otterbein in 2013 and led the women’s team to a second-place finish during the Ohio Athletic Conference championship tournament in 2014. Booher also has 13 years of coaching experience prior to Otterbein, which included stops at Granville High School from 2000 to 2010 and Ohio Dominican from 2011 to 2013.
Lauren’s First and Goal Success
The fifth-annual Lauren’s First and Goal football camp went without a hitch once again this summer. With 400 high-school students from 11 different states coming to Otterbein to participate in the camp, $12,720 was raised for pediatric brain tumor research.
John and Marianne Loose founded Lauren’s First and Goal in 2004 in honor of their daughter, Lauren Loose, who survived a pediatric brain tumor. Otterbein has been hosting the annual football camp since 2010.
