Dec 18, 2024 12:04 AM IST
Clawson: ‘It was time’ to step apart and make Wake Forest soccer coach ‘anyone else’s job’
WINSTON-SALEM, N.C. — Dave Clawson choked again tears a number of instances Tuesday as he defined why it was the appropriate time for him to step down as Wake Forest’s coach amid a time of landscape-altering modifications in school athletics.
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“I did not want to do this, in my perfect world I’d be having this press conference in three or four years. But I just looked at kind of where the industry is right now, and I just felt like it was time.”
The 57-year-old Clawson spent 11 years with the Demon Deacons, a tenure that included guiding Wake Forest to 11 wins and a visit to the Atlantic Coast Convention championship recreation in 2021, in addition to cracking the highest 10 of the ballot in 2021 and 2022 amid a run of six straight bowl appearances.
However the Demon Deacons had gone simply 4-8 up to now two seasons because the components that had helped them maintain success grew to become trickier to handle in at this time’s period of free participant motion by the switch portal and gamers with the ability to money in on their athletic fame by identify, picture and likeness alternatives.
That mixture has led to roster upheaval throughout the game, posing a selected downside for a program like Wake Forest — boasting one of many smallest undergraduate enrollments within the Bowl Subdivision ranks — that has thrived beneath Clawson by retaining and growing gamers over years moderately than touchdown four- and five-star recruits.
By Tuesday, Clawson mentioned he felt as if it was “somebody else’s job” as he shifts into an advisory role to athletic director John Currie.
“I tried to embrace it, I tried to fight through it,” Clawson said. “I tried to get in the mindset with it. I could do it, I just don’t want to do it. It’s really where I am. It’s not the way I’m wired. It’s not how I build programs. It’s not why I got into coaching.”
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