Spring Break
URI names Trainer head football coach
Matt Swiss
Issue date: 3/4/09 Section: News
|
"I cannot tell you how honored and humbled I am to be the head football coach at the University of Rhode Island," Trainer said at the conference. "I had a great job at Bowling Green [State University] but I left that job for an even better job. When I had a chance to come here, I really believed that we were going to do some great things here."
Trainer returns to the university after spending less than three months as an assistant head coach under two-time Division I-AA Coach of the Year Dave Clawson at Bowling Green. URI President Robert L. Carothers and Athletic Director Thorr Bjorn attended Friday's press conference and applauded how quickly the football program was able to move past the resignation of former head coach Darren Rizzi.
"Well, this is a press conference I didn't know we would be having," Carothers said. "But we're delighted to be able to name a new head coach here today. I think we ran the fastest search in the history of the University of Rhode Island because we knew we had an extraordinary person waiting to come back to us and to be able to do this job."
Rizzi resigned as URI's head football coach last Tuesday after accepting an offer to become the special teams coach for the Miami Dolphins. At the press conference Trainer said he left URI in December with the intention of someday coming back. He returns as Rizzi's replacement with nine different coaching jobs listed on his resume.
"The future of football at the University of Rhode Island is solid," Carothers said. "We are committed to an excellent program, we're committed to winning, and I think we've got the person who can take us in that direction."
According to GoRhody, Trainer spent two years as a graduate assistant linebackers coach at Temple University before serving as the linebackers/special teams coach at Frostburg State University. He then coached for two years at Colgate University and at New Haven University before spending eight years as a linebackers coach and a defensive coordinator at Villanova University. Trainer spent 2005 to 2007 as the head coach at Millersville University before his brief stay at URI and Bowling Green.
