After coaching football at the high school level for more than two decades, including the past four seasons at Delaware Hayes, Scott Wetzel is taking a step back.
“It is just time,” Wetzel said. “I will be finished teaching at the end of the school year, too. Delaware has been a solid experience for me. I was able to work with some great people and coach some quality young men. I wish the Pacers nothing but the best.”
Hayes athletics director Steve Glesenkamp, who also worked with Wetzel at Big Walnut, echoed the sentiment.
“I’d like to give him a big ‘thank you’,” Glesenkamp said. “I always like to thank anyone who runs any of our programs. Thanks for the effort he put in, how much he cared, how hard he tried, how hard the coaching staff worked to take care of the student-athletes, which is the most important thing.”
Wetzel was hired to bring stability to a program that’s had just two winning seasons since 2000. It looked like things were headed in that direction, too, as the second of those winning seasons was Wetzel’s first at Hayes, when the Pacers finished 6-4 in 2018.
Things didn’t get any better from there, though, as Hayes went a combined 8-23 in the subsequent three seasons.
Most recently, the Pacers finished 3-8 overall and 1-6 in the OCC-Capital Division. They made the playoffs for just the second time in program history and first since the regions were expanded to double the field from eight to 16 teams this past fall.
Wetzel’s career, which included stops at Buckeye Valley, Big Walnut and Westerville North before landing in Delaware, spanned 22 seasons. He won a combined 10 league championships, piled up an overall record of 150-88 and guided the Golden Eagles to their only state title in program history back in 2007.
Now, it’ll be up to someone else to bring that sort of stability to Delaware.
“Now we begin another search, and we’re excited for the future,” Glesenkamp said. “We have a lot of people coming back on both sides of the ball next year, we have a community that wants to win and the student body supports our school so much … we’re ready to go, working on the schedule, getting busy in the weight room. We have 100% optimism moving forward.
“My goal is to get stability in this football program and make 5-5 the absolute bottom. That’s what we’re fighting for.”
It shouldn’t be long before a new coach is in place, either.
“We’ve been working on it for about three weeks,” Glesenkamp said. “We have a process in place and have been going through applicants. Timing is important, but we’re very comfortable with where we are and hope to have things wrapped up here in the next couple weeks.”
