Ferris State University has named Matt Kellogg the fourth head coach of the women’s soc­cer team in the pro­grams’ 11-year history.

Kellogg comes from Morehead State University (Kent.), where he was in his sec­ond sea­son with the team as an assis­tant coach. Kellogg replaces Neathan Gibson, who resigned in April. Kellogg made his pres­ence known early at Morehead State by train­ing the goal­keep­ers, who com­bined for five shutouts, a 1.42 goals-against aver­age and a .713 save per­cent­age in 19 matches under Kellogg’s guid­ance. Morehead grabbed the first ever Ohio Valley Conference regular-season cham­pi­onship in pro­gram his­tory with a 5−0−3 con­fer­ence record dur­ing the 2009 season.

Before Morehead, Kellogg was an assis­tant coach at the University of Kentucky, where his main oper­a­tion was serv­ing as Wildcats’ recruit­ing coor­di­na­tor while also train­ing the goalies. After Kentucky head coach Warren Lipka left for Morehead State, Kellogg became the Wildcats interim head coach. As the sea­son ended, Kellogg fol­lowed Lipka to Morehead.

“Being an interim head coach at Kentucky con­firmed my desire to become a head coach,” said Kellogg. “It gave me some insight to what it takes to be a head coach and what it takes to do it well.”

Kellogg is no stranger to Michigan, as he is a native of East Lansing and a grad­u­ate of Plainwell High School. He also was an assis­tant coach for three sea­sons at Western Michigan University and an assis­tant at Kalamazoo College for one sea­son, before becom­ing head coach of the pro­gram for a year.

Kellogg played soc­cer for Butler University (Ind.), where he was a two-year letter-winner and also ran a sea­son of track. He earned a bachelor’s degree in sports admin­is­tra­tion and then went to Western Michigan to earn his master’s degree in sports administration.

Kellogg has been at Ferris State for a lit­tle over three weeks now and says he really likes that every­one has been very friendly and help­ful and has made the move here very easy. He also says he is excited to be work­ing with this group of players.

“I have really enjoyed work­ing with the play­ers,” says Kellogg. “They are very eager to learn and improve as indi­vid­u­als and as a team.”

Kellogg says he has been wait­ing for the oppor­tu­nity to become a head coach at the uni­ver­sity level and Ferris State has given him that chance. n