Last semester, it was announced that men’s volleyball will join the roster of varsity sports that Wittenberg has to offer. Since then, Wittenberg alum Evan Amstutz has been named the head coach for the men’s varsity team.
Amstutz, a 2013 graduate, was the president of the club volleyball team starting his freshman year, and held that role through his senior year, along with helping out the women’s team. After two years as a graduate assistant for Miami University’s women’s team, Amstutz has found his way back to Springfield. He will be assisted in the men’s program by Hallie Donathan, who is also the assistant coach for the women’s team.
Since the program is being built from scratch, Amstutz is currently working on recruiting the first ever class of men’s volleyball players for the 2016 season. During the recruiting process, Amstutz and Donathan have been going to tournaments every weekend to find potential members for the program. A great thing about the new varsity program that has helped with recruiting is that there are a limited number of universities that actually have them. Amstutz said that this has helped the recruiting process because “the demand for a place to play is high, and because the supply is limited, we have had interest from top-notch kids right away.”
This advantage has helped to work towards the primary goal for the program for the next few months.
“Our primary goal is to build a team of talented, academic, and high-character young men over the next few months,” Amstutz said.
He is also focused on building a framework for the team to have when they come to campus, so that they establish an expectation for excellence.
Another goal of the program has been to expose every young man possible to the opportunity of competing as a Tiger for the next four years. This has been a difficult task because of the inability to be in multiple places at once.
Aside from this disadvantage, the staff for the program has been working as hard as they can to build a program that brings them to the top in the coming years.
