Coach Dorow: Basketball head coach Tracey Dorow looks on as her team tries to make her proud. The 2009–2010 women’s bas­ket­ball team fin­ished the sea­son with an 8–19 record. Torch File Photo

Of the 10 coaches in the var­sity sports at Ferris State, nine of them are from Michigan.

The lin­eage of Ferris coaches has always had local ties and the cur­rent group is no excep­tion. Three of the nine coaches from Michigan even attended Ferris for their sec­ondary edu­ca­tion. They are from all dif­fer­ent parts of the state, from Sault Ste. Marie to Ypsilanti.

Mike Mignano, head coach of the men and women’s golf teams, received his master’s degree in Business Administration this year after going through the Professional Golf Management pro­gram at Ferris a four years before.
Conference ties

Some of the Bulldog head coaches served as assis­tants at other uni­ver­si­ties in the Great Lakes Intercollegiate Athletic Conference before becom­ing head coaches at Ferris. Men’s bas­ket­ball head coach Bill Sall served as an assis­tant coach at Hillsdale for four sea­sons, while head soft­ball coach Keri Becker assisted at Saginaw Valley State for two years.

Coach Brandel-Wilhelm: Volleyball head coach Tia Brandel-Wilhhelm moti­vat­ing and encour­ag­ing her team dur­ing a hud­dle. The vol­ley­ball team ended the 2009 sea­son with a record of 19–12. Torch File Photo

Many of Ferris’ head coaches com­peted at GLIAC schools includ­ing Bulldog head foot­ball coach Jeff Pierce, head track and cross coun­try coach Steve Picucci, head women’s bas­ket­ball coach Tracey Dorow, Becker and Mignano. Their past expe­ri­ence with schools within the con­fer­ence helped pre­pare them for the com­pe­ti­tion they would face.

“I think that famil­iar­ity with the GLIAC is always a plus in hir­ing a coach,” said Becker

Knowing a par­tic­u­lar area in a state or coun­try is espe­cially impor­tant in the ranks of recruit­ing. The more a coach knows about a cer­tain area, the bet­ter he or she will be able to con­tact local high school coaches and develop rela­tion­ships with numer­ous peo­ple. Sall said recruit­ing has become more about the rela­tion­ships with high school and Amateur Athletic Union (AAU) coaches.
“That’s where know­ing peo­ple and hav­ing the net­work set up already helps a ton and I think being here in Michigan makes a big, big dif­fer­ence,” said Sall.

Becker said the GLIAC is among the strongest con­fer­ences in the nation for Division II athletics.

“The league really helps us as an insti­tu­tion in terms of find­ing good qual­ity coaches,” said Becker.

Bob Daniels, head coach of the Bulldog hockey team, also played within the con­fer­ence in which he now coaches, the Central Collegiate Hockey Association, at Michigan State.
Michigan is home

After grad­u­at­ing col­lege, many peo­ple find them­selves want­ing to leave of Michigan. Many peo­ple sim­ply go wher­ever there is a job avail­able. For Mignano and Becker, how­ever, the old adage “there’s no place like home” rings true.

Mignano moved to California after grad­u­at­ing from Ferris for intern­ship at Torrey Pines Golf Course. After six months, Mignano said he was home sick and a grad­u­ate assis­tant posi­tion opened up in the Ferris golf pro­gram. He wanted to pur­sue a master’s degree and ulti­mately wanted to get into coach­ing or teaching.

“Ferris has always been my home,” said Mignano, “It kind of worked out perfectly.”

Becker she said her fam­ily is in Michigan and she never con­sid­ered mov­ing out of state. Since grad­u­at­ing high school Pierce, Sall, Picucci, and Becker have always lived in Michigan.

All about opportunity

In order to get a job regard­less of the posi­tion, an oppor­tu­nity has to present itself. Picucci was look­ing for employ­ment in the auto­mo­tive indus­try when he was offered a job as an assis­tant coach. He said he was look­ing every­where and just had not found a job at the time.

“To get the coach­ing job, I was just in the right place at the right time,” said Picucci.

Becker was in a sim­i­lar sit­u­a­tion. After grad­u­at­ing from Saginaw Valley, Becker was in the process of becom­ing a state police offi­cer when for­mer Ferris women’s bas­ket­ball coach Dana Monk con­tacted her about the open posi­tion as a soft­ball coach. Becker said she applied jus to see what would hap­pen and planned on coach­ing for a few years until she fig­ured out what she wanted to do.

“I think it’s about oppor­tu­nity,” said Becker. “I think some­times things choose you before you choose them.”

Prior to com­ing to Ferris Sall, Becker, Dorow and Daniels had not been head coaches at the col­le­giate level. Each of them has now been at Ferris for eight years or longer and seen suc­cess. Picucci said smaller schools are more likely to hire coaches with less experience.

“The smaller schools are more apt I think to take a chance on a coach, rather than going by just pure what the resume says,” said Picucci.

The oppor­tu­nity has paid off as Pierce, Daniels, Becker and vol­ley­ball head coach Tia Brandel-Wilhelm are the win­ningest coaches in Bulldog his­tory in their respec­tive sports.