From the podcast: How Union’s Derek Witheford built a D-3 power

On the latest episode of the Chasing the Goal podcast, Jack Piatelli and Kyle Devitte are joined by Union head coach Derek Witheford.

On this week’s episode of New England Lacrosse Journal’s “Chasing The Goal” podcast, hosts Kyle Devitte and Jack Piatelli were joined by Union head coach Derek Witheford.

A native of Wellesley, Mass., Witheford played his college lacrosse at Union. As a bruising defenseman, he was the team’s first All-American since 1993 in 2011 as a senior. Witheford joined the program as an assistant coach in 2013 before taking over as the head coach in 2020. His first two seasons in charge were truncated by the COVID-19 pandemic; his teams posted a combined record of 9-4.

Last spring, Witheford led the Dutchmen to their best season ever. They won 18 games en route to the Division 3 national championship game where they fell 12-10 to Liberty League foe RIT. This season, Union is off to a hot start with wins over Babson and Endicott.

The full podcast can be accessed below and is available on all major platforms. If you enjoy it, please leave a rating and a review.

Here are some excerpts from the pod.

Jack Piatelli: Coach, you’ve had a great start to the season. You’re 2-0. You beat Babson. You beat Endicott and you’ve scored 27 goals and allowed only six goals in the last contest. You like to run and gun a lot. Do you plan on continuing that pace throughout the season, depending on who you’re playing against? 

Derek Witheford: I think we’re a team that can play multiple different styles, and I think that hopefully showed last year. But I really think the strength of our team — if I had to name one this year — would be our defensive midfielders and LSMs. I think we have some really strong players in the middle of the field that can play great defense. But they are also skilled enough to push the ball in transition. So, when we want to let those guys run, we can. I think it’s a fun brand of lacrosse. We encourage those guys to buy in defensively because then they get a little bit of a chance to score on offense.

Kyle Devitte: Tell me a little bit more about how you’re able to utilize your staff in the development aspect of the game. Because I think for a lot of coaches, there has to be a delineation of responsibility.

So, in terms of your offensive coach and your defensive coach, how much responsibility are you giving them to develop those players. How much are you weighing in on that on either side? 

Derek Witheford: We have a small coaching staff here at Union. It’s myself and Marcel Godino. He primarily runs the offense, but I expect him to run the defense as well. We’re coaches together, and we don’t really have sides of the ball. I mainly focus on defense, but I coach offense as well.

So, all of us are supposed to be doing all everything at once, which is hard, but that’s what helps in some of the player development. He’s not just looking at offense, and I’m not just looking at defense. We’re coaching every part of the ball as best we can.

We also added a volunteer assistant this year from the football team, Devon Smith, who’s doing a great job coming from Cortland State as a first-year coach. He’s coaching football and lacrosse at Union.

@TheKyleDevitte
[email protected]

More Episodes