A new year and another season of football starts this weekend for the Cardinals and interim head coach Jake Schaefer.
After former head coach Tommy Zagorski stepped away from coaching this off-season to focus on his health, coach Jake Schaefer, last year’s offensive coordinator, was named interim head coach of the Cardinals for the 2024-2025 season.
The Cardinals enter the season with new coaching hires looking to help turn around Otterbein's 0-10 record from last season, and Schaefer is already starting to see promising talent on the field during the scrimmage against Denison University.
“I was really impressed. We brought in a grad transfer from Siena Heights and he started for us. He did a really good job,” Schaefer said.
With a new head coach, seven out of the eight coaches under Zagorski last year were brought back this season.
A good number of football alumni were added to the staff including safeties coach Tayon Howard, student assistant Carlos Alamo and graduate assistant Clayton Adams.
Coach Schaefer also welcomed a new co-offensive coordinator, Jack Goulet. Schaefer sees an improvement in the offensive play from Goulet’s strategies, “I think it first starts with our newly hired coach Jack Goulet. He’s come in and revamped the energy in that room.”
Among all of the positive remarks, Schaefer also saw room for improvement.
“I think there were just a lot of little detail things we needed to clean up. Also getting those guys to believe in each other,” Schaefer said.
Overall, several new additions to the staff and the team could give the Otterbein football team an edge for the upcoming season.
