| Douglas Southwestern (Kan.) photo |
MacMurray has named a new football coach. Chris Douglas will take over next week as head coach of the Highlanders, coming from Highland Community College in Highland, Kansas, where he was the offensive coordinator.
He replaces Jake Box, who took a job as an assistant coach at Presentation, a fellow member of the Upper Midwest Athletic Conference which is starting football this fall. Box was 1-19 in two seasons, taking over a team that had gone 0-20 the previous two years.
MacMurray has fewer than 500 full-time undergraduates and is the
smallest school playing Division III football.
“I did a lot of research before I came to the MacMurray
campus to interview with the faculty and staff,” Douglas
said. “I discovered plenty of opportunities in my research
for MacMurray to have success academically and athletically. But
what my research couldn't tell me, what I discovered on my visit,
was the quality of the faculty and staff at MacMurray and how
important the success of its students is.” He continued,
“I'm excited to work with coach and athletic director Dane
Pavlovich, the coaching staff and players at MacMurray and to help
return Mac to levels of success it enjoyed in the recent past."
MacMurray's last winning season was in 2004, when the
Highlanders went 7-3, 4-3 in the now-defunct Illini-Badger
Conference.
“We are thrilled that Chris Douglas is going to be our next
head football coach at MacMurray College,” said Pavlovich.
“He has a tremendous amount of football knowledge and is a
great recruiter. He is a quality addition to our coaching staff,
and we feel that he will point the Highlander football program in
the right direction.”
Douglas brings to MacMurray a wide experience in coaching, having
been defensive and strength coach at his alma mater, Southwestern
College, where he was also head coach for five seasons; running
backs coach at Abilene Christian; defensive coordinator at
Jamestown College; and switched over to offensive coordinator at
Highland Community College. He also had a three-year stint at
Stigler Public Schools in Oklahoma, where he took the high school
team to its first state playoff berth at home in 25 years.
Douglas has a bachelor’s degree in biology from Southwestern
and a master’s in education from Wichita State.