2008 Woodie Awards
New coach looks to lead football team to glory
Kaitlyn Moore
Issue date: 3/25/05 Section: Sports
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"When you look at the players that you coached when they come back and they've got a wife and a trail of little kids behind them, I think that's when you realize that you've done what you're supposed to do."
Kiesel's office walls have a few motivational placards and a dry-erase board. Family photographs and black-marker drawings of SpongeBob Squarepants from his children fill up the rest of the space.
Kiesel is 45 years old and 5'10, with blue-gray eyes and pale brown hair. He talks animatedly of his family, quickly retelling how he and his wife Annette named each of their three children, Julianne, Eddie, and Robert, after important people- Julianne for the Naval Academy's first female head of midshipmen, Eddie for a figure at Albright College, and Robert for Kiesel's father, who forced integration of the Sugar Bowl during his coaching career.
Kiesel hopes that his emphasis on family and success will help to turn around a struggling football team.
"Our ultimate goal is to be consistent champions of the ODAC and be a consistent NCAA Division III play-off caliber team," he says.
A signed Fairfield University Stags football sits on his bookshelf in a Plexiglas case. Kiesel began Fairfield's football team from scratch when their program started in 1996. He won their league's Coach of the Year award, and the 1999 club ranked fifth in the country for Division I-AA non-scholarship teams.
Photos of past teams are also hanging, like those of Albright College and the US Naval academy. He has coached for 25 years and has a reputation for improving lagging teams. Starting at Albright in 1993, he brought their 0-10 team to 8-3 in two years, with an overall record of 15-15-1.
"I liked the fact that he was really organized and confident, and he brought in a belief," said junior Kyle Kiser. He and junior Charlie Stroup told the search committee about the team's opinions during the selection process.
"He's taken a team that wasn't terribly successful and made them successful. He knows how to do it and he wants us to do it."
All of Kiesel's mannerisms are enthusiastic. During the interview he leans across his desk or reclines with his arms tucked behind his head. At one point, he jumps from his chair and grabs a dry erase marker, squeaking a coaching diagram onto the board.
