AMU Track Coach Hired by Belmont Abbey
- Details
-
Published on Thursday, 21 April 2011 00:25
Mike DeWitt, who came to Ave Maria University to start the school's track and field program a year ago, is leaving this summer to take a position as head track and cross-country coach at Belmont Abbey College near Charlotte, NC.
Mr. Dewitt said in an interview that he planned to stay on at Ave Maria until the end of May, when he will have at least two runners competing at the National Intercollegiate Athletic Association national championships held over Memorial Day weekend in Indiana. One of them, Marya Haegler, won the 10,000-meter run last weekend at the NAIA Sun Conference meet in Daytona. Miss Haegler, he said, will be joining him at Belmont Abbey.
AMU is examining its budget priorities for the next academic year, and Mr. DeWitt said he had received word that his budget would be reduced. He said, however, that he thought the job at Belmont Abbey was a great opportunity for him regardless. The school has a new athletic director he said, and a college president who was a track star in college himself, he said. "It's almost like having the college president as the athletic director," he said.
"I'm not embittered," he addied. "Even if everything at AMU was going to be exactly the same, I still would be going to Belmont Abbey."
Mr. DeWitt said he was recommending that his current assistant coach, Matt Booth (right), be named to head the AMU track and field program.
