Tom Dosch working hard in return to Jimmies football staff

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JAMESTOWN — The University of Jamestown football team’s coaching staff will have a familiar face patrolling the sidelines next season with the hiring of Tom Dosch to multiple roles on the staff.

On Wednesday, Feb. 12, Dosch was hired as the associate head coach, linebackers coach and special teams coordinator.

“It was a great opportunity for me to get back to coaching with several guys that have even coached for me that have been around for a number of years and at a school and a university I’m familiar with the people and the community and also a conference that I spent 10 years coaching in, in the Northern Sun (Intercollegiate Conference),” Dosch said. “So a lot of familiarity … in terms of both personal and professional movement.”

Dosch said the university reached out to him and the talks progressed once the mutual interest was established. Dosch said his first few days have been spent meeting his new players and his fellow coaches and getting his feet under him. Dosch said he has paid attention to the program and how it is doing since he left, which makes the transition in his return easier.

Dosch said he will work with the linebackers alongside defensive coordinator Shane Clancy.

Last season, the Jimmies had 46 punts for an average of 34.67 yards per game and 29 kickoffs for 20.31 average distance yards. The Jimmies also went 3-for-5 on field goals and 14-for-19 on extra points.

“The structure and the ability to coach the special teams and have that as a focus is going to be huge for those guys and he’s really good at it,” Jimmies head coach Brian Mistro said. “So for me to say, ‘Hey coach, you’re gonna take over special teams and still be helping out on defense obviously too and helping me with head coach stuff.’ … It all circles back to the idea that it’s just a wealth of knowledge that over the course of 30 years of coaching he’s gonna have and bring to the table.”

Dosch returns to Jamestown for a second stint after previously serving as the head coach from 2004-2007. During that time, Dosch went 25-17, winning a conference championship in 2007.

While he is getting used to being back in Jamestown, Dosch said he is enjoying seeing the people around the University of Jamestown and the greater community that he knew when he was last here.

Dosch left the Jimmies to be an assistant coach at NCAA Division I Southern Illinois University for two seasons before spending 10 years as the head coach at Northern State University (South Dakota). His most recent coaching stop was as the outside linebackers coach at the University of North Dakota for two seasons.

Mistro said Dosch was the coach who recruited him out of Gilbert, Arizona, and served as his head coach for the first three years of his career at what was then Jamestown College. After his playing career ended, Mistro spent two years serving as a graduate assistant under Dosch at Northern State.

Clancy also played for Dosch at Northern State, and Jimmies strength and conditioning coach Ryder Weischedel played for him at UJ.

“I’m excited to be doing it and back in it and that’s the biggest thing,” Dosch said. “I’ve told my wife, Tina, several times over the last few years that there would probably come a point in my career that I’d want to go back and coach with guys who played and coached for me and that time is now. It’s been a great opportunity and it’s been fun to watch Brian and the entire staff progress. My biggest thing is coming in and helping the program and doing what I can to help the program and help with the transition to the Northern Sun and help growing the program and they’ve set up a great foundation and I want to help them build upon it moving forward.”

The 2025 season will be the Jimmies’ first in the Northern Sun Intercollegiate Conference at the NCAA Division II level. The conference is one that Mistro and Dosch are very familiar with thanks to their time at Northern State.

“It’s been six years since I coached down there so a lot has changed and again football is football, just being around the game enough, whether I coached in the Northern Sun, spent the last two years coaching in the Missouri Valley (Conference), coached in the old North Central Conference, coached in a number of different conferences here in the Upper Midwest; football is football,” Dosch said. “There might be some things that I bring to the table that a certain coach or team will run schematically or something but again, it’s been a few years since I’ve been out so it’s not like there’s a ton of secrets that I’m gonna unveil here.”

While he goes through spring camp, Dosch said his plan is to work on the fundamentals, study his team and figure out where players can fit on the special teams unit.

“We’ll spend a lot of time going over install whether that be on special teams or on defense, evaluating our players, working with our players who are doing winter workouts with coach Weischedel now and that’s spending meeting time with them to get to know them and also reviewing the Xs and Os and going over our install for spring really,” Dosch said. “As we head into spring break and ultimately spring ball, that’s really important, get to know as many people as possible, get as comfortable as I can with the surroundings. A lot of it is terminology, and that’s what you find … something that you’ve called a certain defense or stunt or something for x number of years now they call it something else here. So for me, it’s just learning the terminology, getting familiar with the personnel.”

Hello,
My name is Max O’Neill. I am a Sports Reporter at The Jamestown Sun. I am a native New Yorker, who graduated from Ithaca College in 2020 with a degree in Television-Radio.