Football Coach

Loyola football coach Brian Abbott has stepped down after 10 years, four Maryland Interscholastic Athletic Association A Conference titles and six Turkey Bowl victories. "I just think your internal clock tells you it's time," Abbott said. "My goal was never to be a coach that was a head coach for 30 years. There's a lot of opportunities out there and staying here at Loyola. I'm going to go back to grad school in the fall and just find new opportunities and be excited about the things that I can do. " Abbott, 45, will remain at the school, where he will continue to run the school's summer programs and the Blakefield Experience program as well as coach middle school lacrosse.

There was a questionable forecast for Thursday night, making an evening boat cruise out of Annapolis an uncertainty for Maryland football coach Randy Edsall and a couple of his counterparts who came from College Park to schmooze with fans over dinner and drinks. But the winds settled and the luxury yacht "Catherine Murray" took off for a smooth hourlong sail on the Severn River. After a rocky start to his tenure with the Terps , Edsall should hope that the second installment of the school's "Coaches Caravan" portends well for his third season and beyond.

Elwood Townsend Douglass In his fourth year as head coach, Townsend led the Ducks to the most impressive turnaround of the season, taking a 3-7 team from a year ago and molding a 7-4 playoff team that lost only to a state champion and two state semifinalists. The Ducks qualified for the regional playoffs for only the second time in school history, and they suffered their losses by a total of 16 points -- to No. 6 and Class 1A champion Dunbar, 8-6; No. 7 Milford Mill, 18-16; and No. 11 Edmondson, 14-6, in the regular season and then 14-10 in the Class 2A North regional semifinal.

College football Ex-Navy coach Hardin selected for HOF Former Navy football coach Wayne Hardin will be inducted into the College Football Hall of Fame, the National Football Foundation announced Tuesday. Hardin is the 24th person affiliated with the Naval Academy to be inducted into the College Football Hall of Fame and the third head coach, joining Gil Dobie (17-3 at Navy from 1917 to 1919) and George Welsh (55-46-1 at Navy from 1973 to 1981). Hardin will be officially inducted at the National Football Foundation's awards dinner Dec.10 at the Waldorf-Astoria in New York and will be enshrined in the summer of 2014 at the College Football Hall of Fame in Atlanta.

Bobby Ross got much of the credit for Maryland's short reign as the most dominant team in the Atlantic Coast Conference in the mid 1980s, but Joe Krivak was often referred to as the guru and play-caller for a string of record-setting Terps quarterbacks. Krivak, who died Tuesday after battling leukemia, tutored a line of Maryland quarterbacks that began with Boomer Esiason and Frank Reich, included Stan Gelbaugh and Dan Henning, and ended with Neil O'Donnell and Scott Zolak after Krivak succeeded Ross as head coach in 1987.

Johnny Brooks Aberdeen A year ago, Brooks coached Havre de Grace to the state Class 1A final. Then, looking for a change, he packed up his coaching staff and moved down U.S. 40 to take over a floundering Aberdeen program coming off a 1-9 season. "We knew what we were walking into," he said. "We didn't know the talent, but we knew we had a lot of work ahead of us. We got on them in the summertime about getting better and not having to be 1-9. … That kind of fueled some of them, and the senior captains really bought into it. They were out there in triple digits [temperatures]

Et cetera McDaniel chooses Hoyt as football coach McDaniel announced Monday that Mike Hoyt has been named the 24th football coach in program history. Hoyt, who will begin March 19, comes to the Green Terror after serving as the associate coach and defensive coordinator, as well as director of strength and conditioning for the athletics program, at Albright in Reading, Pa. He was also responsible for recruiting in central Pennsylvania and northern counties in Maryland.

Towson University football coach Rob Ambrose has agreed to an extension, athletic director Mike Waddell said Thursday night. Ambrose received three years on top of the two left on the deal he signed when he took the job in 2009. Financial terms of the new contract were not announced. "It's more than a job to Rob," Waddell said of Ambrose, a 1993 Towson graduate. "He wants to build a championship program, not just from a professional standpoint, but for personal reasons. " Ambrose's new deal comes nearly three weeks after the Tigers finished a 9-3 season with a 40-38 loss to Lehigh in the second round of the Division I football championships, Towson's first postseason appearance as a Football Championship Subdivision team.

Archbishop Spalding athletic director Jeff Parsons has been looking for someone to permanently replace longtime football coach Mike Whittles, who died of pancreatic cancer in June. On Wednesday, Parsons announced that Kyle Schmitt, who coached at Atholton for the past four years, has been named the new coach of the Cavaliers. Schmitt, who played football at Maryland, compiled a 38-9 record and led the Raiders to playoff appearances in all four seasons. Atholton lost in the Class 3A East regional final in 2011 and 2012.

It's odd timing, but Maryland released the contracts of head football coach Randy Edsall's assistant coaches today even as the school continued its review of the program. The school has not ruled out staff changes. The timing was happenstance. We media bloodhounds had requested the pacts months ago and are receiving them now. These contracts sometimes take months to finalize. We got eight of the nine contracts today and were told that offensive coordinator Gary Crowton's pact was not yet available.

Randy Edsall is a football coach, not a marketing guy, but he's got the lingo down. Ask him why the Maryland football team is practicing Saturday at Dunbar, and he says it's all about growing the Terps brand in this area and throughout the rest of the state, too. "What we need to do is make sure we're going out and meeting the people and being visible in the Baltimore community, rather than expecting people to come to us," he says....

The Benjamin G Eaton Coaches Clinic, sponsored by Clearpath Academics, will be held at Dunbar on June 22. Maryland coach Randy Edsall will present the morning keynote address and Towson coach Rob Ambrose will present the afternoon address. Among the other workshops, West Virginia wide receivers coach Lonnie Galloway will present on “Wide Receiver Fundamentals,” Maryland running backs coach Andre Powell on “Running Back Drills With a Purpose,” Dunbar defensive coordinator Michael Carter on “Eliminating Explosive Gains,” and Calvert Hall coach Donald Davis on “Rebuilding a Program.” For more information, click here .

Occasionally this column takes a look at what happened to a person or thing that was a memorable part of Laurel's past. This month it looks at two Laurel icons from the late 1960s and early 1970s. Laurel High coach set the standard Laurel High School was never known for fielding excellent football teams. Ron Ladue changed that. Ladue inherited a football program that was not expected to win. But Ladue's teams did win and changed the expectations for Laurel High.

Donald Hill-Eley has always told his Morgan State football players that life is 10 percent what happens to you and 90 percent how you respond. Now, after enduring as strange a few months as any college coach could fathom, Hill-Eley is striving to live by his own lesson. In late November, following the Bears' third straight losing season, Hill-Eley accidentally received an e-mail outlining the university's plan to seek his replacement. For almost six weeks after that, as rival coaches ramped up recruiting for 2013, he heard nothing official about his status.

Archbishop Spalding athletic director Jeff Parsons has been looking for someone to permanently replace longtime football coach Mike Whittles, who died of pancreatic cancer in June. On Wednesday, Parsons announced that Kyle Schmitt, who coached at Atholton for the past four years, has been named the new coach of the Cavaliers. Schmitt, who played football at Maryland, compiled a 38-9 record and led the Raiders to playoff appearances in all four seasons. Atholton lost in the Class 3A East regional final in 2011 and 2012.

Vernon E. Seibert, a former athletic director and coach at Glenelg High School who had been an outstanding football player during the 1940s at College Park, died Saturday of cancer at Union Hospital in Elkton. The longtime Columbia resident was 88. "You could write a book about Vernon Seibert. What a character. The stories about him are legend," said Dennis P. Cole, who had been head football coach at Glenelg in the 1980s and retired five years ago. "He was always held in high-esteem but was not the kind of buddy-buddy type of football coach when it came to the kids," he said.

Jim Doyle will not return as football coach at Severn School, athletic director Fred Hewitt said yesterday.John Beckman, an assistant coach and faculty member, will replace Doyle."

Kevin Kelly was named Atholton's head football coach Wednesday. He replaces Don Van Deusen who stepped down for personal reasons after 21 seasons.Van Deusen, the athletic director, also announced that Warren Michael will be head varsity girls soccer coach. Michael replaces Jim Carlan.Kelly, a guidance counselor, worked with Van Deusen for 17 years either as the Raiders' junior varsity football coach or as an assistant varsity coach."I have mixed emotions," Kelly said. "I'm excited because it is something I've always wanted to do. But I'm sad because my mentor is gone.

St. Mary's named two new coaches for fall sports today, according to a news release from the school. Frank Richard takes over as the school's football coach, while Chris Hennings joins the Saints as the boys soccer coach. Richard, a graduate of Johns Hopkins and native of New Orleans, spent the past five years as the offensive and defensive line coach at Calvert Hall. He also previously served in the same role at Cardinal Gibbons. "I am honored and excited to lead St Mary's football," Richard said in the news release.