June 25, 2009
By Amy Farnum Novin
NCAA.com
Trine University head football coach Matt Land is making a habit of leading his teams to the playoffs.
After guiding the Thunder to a 10-0 regular season record and the school’s first-ever NCAA playoff berth in just the sixth year of the program’s existence, Land is now taking the Fort Wayne Freedom of the Continental Indoor Football League to the championship game for the first time in the team’s history.
Land, who was honored as the American Football Coaches Association Division III Co-Region Four Coach of the Year in 2008 with Trine, is serving as Freedom’s head coach for the second straight season and, most recently, led the squad to a 49-40 win at Marion (Ohio) to earn a championship game berth.
“We’re the first team (in the CIFL) to go on the road and win in the semifinals,” said Land. “We’ve got a lot of good kids on our team, and a lot of good NCAA players from the Division I, II and III levels. It’s a nice way for guys to continue playing football after their NCAA careers.”
Despite some tough times for the franchise lately, and not practicing in weeks, the Land-coached Freedom (7-5) overcame adversity to advance to play the Chicago Slaughter (13-0) for the title on June 27 in Chicago.
“We’ve got a lot of veteran players on our team, and guys from good college programs like Wayne State and Ball State,” said Land. “We have guys that have played at a high level in football. In some ways it is bad, but when you get guys that are older in age, it takes some wear off their legs. We had fresh legs going into the game on Saturday, and I think that was really a big deal. Our guys were fresh and you could see the difference in speed from the get-go in that game.”
Two of Land’s assistant coaches at Trine are actually his players on the Freedom – defensive backs coach David Gater plays corner, while wide receivers coach Dan Musielewicz plays the position he coaches. Trine’s defensive coordinator Troy Abbs also serves in the same post for the Freedom.
Land says the experience of coaching professional players in the Great Lakes-based CIFL has been very rewarding.
“I’ve coached every level from junior high to arena football teams, and football players are football players,” said Land. “They still call everybody ‘Coach’ whether they are 13, 25 or 30. As you go up, it gets a little bit easier and you can get into a little more scheming. It’s easier to make in-game adjustments with the older players. I tell them all the time that they’ve been coached by a lot better people than me. In the last seven years, I’ve learned as much from those players as they have from me.”
After three seasons of developing the program at Trine, Land is expecting the Thunder to compete for a Michigan Intercollegiate Athletic Association title once again in 2009.
“Our goal is to win the conference title and get back in the NCAA playoffs,” said Land. “Now, that we’ve been there we want to make some huge strides in that area. We want to kick down the door of national recognition, and get on the national scene. We want to be Wheaton or Mount Union or Whitewater – we want to be mentioned in those same conversations with those types of schools.”
Land will prepare for Trine to open the 2009 season at Manchester on Sept. 3 after wrapping up the Fort Wayne Freedom’s title run on Saturday at 8 p.m.
