Kickoff soon to come in Kerrville: A look at the future of Texas’ newest college football program and the head coach who is leading its charge
KERRVILLE–For the first time in eight years, Kenny Treschitta won’t spend the first weekend of the Division III football season coaching his players on the field. But his schedule is anything but empty as the 2024 season kicks off this weekend.
As the inaugural head coach in Schreiner’s modern era of football, the east coast native has plenty on his plate. Recruiting being chief amongst those tasks, while developing connections with local coaches, and rising the platform of Mountaineer football, whose first season will take place next fall with the program’s first varsity season following in 2026.
“You can tell from the press conference, you can tell from the interactions I’ve had, that the people here are excited about football coming to the Hill Country and coming to Schreiner,” Treschitta said in an interview with The Big and The Best of D3 Texas.
That fact was made evident by the sheer number of people who packed into a ballroom inside the Cailloux Campus Activity Center in early July for Treschitta’s official introduction as head coach. For a first-time head coach, it was quite the entrance.
“To put on the jacket and say ‘Go Mountaineers’, the reception is something that will always reasonate with me,” he said recently, looking back on that day.
It was certainly a positive welcome to Texas for the New Englander. As he spoke to the large crowd of students, community members, media, and faculty about his ethusiasm for the future of Schreiner football, one fact remained clear in it all. For most of those in attendence, Treschitta himself included, college football hasn’t been played in the Texas Hill Country during their lifetimes. Despite a string of success in the mid-1900s, which included a 7-3 season in 1950 in which future NFL Pro-Bowl receiver Raymond Berry led the offense, Schreiner dropped the sport altogether in 1956, never to return. It wasn’t until 2017 that serious discussions about bringing football back began, leading up to the present, in which Treschitta is working to rapidly put the pieces in place for a firm foundation in Schreiner’s second go-around on the gridiron.
“It was a historic moment, one of many that will happen here in the future,” Treschitta noted of securing Schreiner’s first commit on August 9. “It’s a young man who is going to forever hold the distinction of being the first commit. It was a proud moment for us, and one of the things I probably need to do better is stop and smell the roses. But I’ll do a better job of that when this class is finished. My mindset was, ‘Alright, let’s keep this momentum going.’”
It was the first item on a checklist of many that needs to happen before Schreiner actually takes the field for its junior varsity season next fall. Much of it will happen behind-the-scenes: scheduling future games, ordering equipment, and hiring additional members of the coaching staff by the time winter arrives.
“There’s so much to be done when it comes to recruiting, ordering gear, facilities and all of that,” Treschitta noted. “That’s the majority of where our time will be spent.”
On the surface, building a program that still hasn’t yet stepped onto the field is a significant challenge. But it’s one that Treschitta knows well.
Prior to the fall of 2014, he made the move from Division II McKendree University to the D-III ranks, joining Mike Lichten at now-defunct Becker College as the program’s inside linebackers coach. It was a return to his roots in college football, having starred at linebacker at D-III Catholic as a two-year starter before graduating in 2009. And most importantly, it formed his close connection with Lichten, who departed Becker after the 2015 season for a Division III program that did not yet exist at the University of New England.
Treschitta was one of Lichten’s first hires in the building process at UNE following one season at Western Connecticut State, as the program geared up for its first season in 2017. Hired in the summer of 2016, the young coach was involved in every aspect of turning Nor’easter football from a vision and into a reality. The entire 2016-17 academic year was spent focused on doing many of the same things he will be doing this academic year, chief amongst those being to secure the inaugral recruiting class.
“We were recruiting a vision, beliefs, core values,” Treschitta noted. “Because when we got to UNE, similar to Schreiner, there weren't any tangible facilities. There wasn’t a stadium that we could walk our recruits into. There wasn’t a locker room for us to take pictures in when we first got there. There wasn’t a finished weight room for recruits to see where they were going to work out.
“So that first class really committed to a belief, our vision of what we wanted the program to be, and the relationships we had built.”
It taught Treschitta a number of valuable lessons, apart from the physcial coaching that made his defenses so good over the last five years in the Commonwealth Coast Conference. Most of all, it was clear that recruiting, at its core, isn’t so much about the bells and whistles of a football program, and much more about who is steering the ship and the direction in which they are taking it. It cannot be underestimated how crucial the art of recruiting is to a program in its infancy stage.
“Every unofficial visit, every school visit, every phone call, every interaction seems to you like life or death,” Treschitta said with a laugh. “You don’t have a roster in place or a roster to fall back on. Each interaction is magnified when there’s that kind of pressure.”
Taking on the weight of that pressure comes with great responsibility. And plenty of persistence. At UNE, Treschitta helped guide a young squad through an inaugural season in 2017 wth a 2-6 record against JV opponents. The Nor’easters went 2-7 the following year against varsity opponents. 2019 got better, at 4-6, including a 24-20 win in the season finale over Lichten and Treschitta’s former program at Becker College. The Nor’easters came out of the Covid year with a 4-5 season in 2021 followed by a 5-5 record in 2022. Then came another milestone last fall, when UNE finished above .500 for the first time in program history, going 6-4. They never stopped recruiting, reaching higher, and pushing harder. Treschitta plans to do the same in Kerrville.
“It was a unique experience,” Treschitta said of his eight years at UNE. “I think that definitely helped in the interview process and the application process [for this job]. I could talk about some of the things that we did at UNE that were successful and some of the things I wish we’d done differently. I was there eight years so I was able to talk about some of the things we tweaked along the way in different aspects of the program.
“I don’t have head coach experience, but I do have a good structure and a comprehensive plan for building a program. It won’t be the same blueprint [we had at UNE], but it’s an idea. I think that reasonated with our administration and our athletic director.”
It is important to note that Schreiner AD Bill Raleigh also has experience with a start-up football program himself, having overseen Southwestern’s introduction of varsity football during his time as the Assistant AD in Georgetown. With Treschitta and Raleigh having both played key roles in constructing programs in recent years, Schreiner is on an excellent path.
“The short-term goal for the program is to get the word out,” Treschitta said. “The football communities in San Antonio, in the Hill Country, and in Central Texas aren’t as familiar with Schreiner because we haven’t had football. So an immediate goal is to get to know the high school programs in those areas and bring our message and our values to the coaches and recruits.”
He has made it a point to visit numerous high schools within a wide radius of Schreiner’s campus over the last several weeks, spreading the word of what is to come on the gridiron next fall in Kerrville. But it hasn’t been limited to that. Another goal, that Treschitta plans to be a significant aspect of the program, is to form connections with Schreiner’s far-ranging alumni base. And Treschitta is also making a point to get to know everyone across campus, from professors to university staff to his fellow coaches leading their own programs within the SCAC.
“The Kerrville community is excited about Schreiner football. So I want to make sure I’m a presence there [within the community]. And then I want to connect with our faculty, our staff, our current student-athletes. That’s a short-term priority for me. Making sure I’m at the volleyball games, the soccer games, and connecting with our professors and deans, getting to know them.”
And when it comes to looking further down the road, beyond this upcoming year?
“Long term, we want to build a great inital recruiting class. Young men who are going to be the founding fathers of our football program. Making sure they have character, pay value to academics, and that they’re good football players. That’s what we’re looking for and what we’re going to build the class on.
“Schreiner has traditionally served the Hill Country and our football program is only going to enhance that. We’re going to be Hill Country tough. We’re going to climb.”
Numbers of the Week
19 minutes was the time it took Hardin-Simmons’ Kylah Holland to complete the 5K course at TCU’s John McKenzie Invitational last Saturday, as the ASC’s reigning cross country champion finished ninth overall in a field stacked with Division I competitors. Holland was No. 1 amongst non-D3 runners by 49 seconds, and ran at a pace of 6:07 per mile.
22 years since the ETBU Volleyball team had been ranked in the American Volleyball Coaches Association (AVCA) Top 25. That drought ended on Tuesday, when the Tigers broke into the poll at No. 25, following a 2-1 weekend in San Antonio that saw Mallory Matthews’ squad defeat St. Benedict and Texas Lutheran, and narrowly fall to now-No. 5 Trinity in five sets.
150 victories as UMHB’s head coach for Barry Elkins, a feat that was accomplished in Monday’s 1-0 nailbiter at Concordia. Elkins, who took over at UMHB in 2012, is the only coach in program history to reach a triple-digit win total. In 13 seasons, The Cru has won 74 percent of its games under his leadership.
1046 career assists for Hardin-Simmons setter Ali Meyer, who has played in 54 matches for the Cowgirls over the last three years. She surpassed the century mark in the season-opening win over Washington & Lee, and is now 10th all-time in program history in that stat category.
Game of the Week: No. 5 Trinity (TX) vs No. 4 Johns Hopkins (Volleyball)
After a 3-0 weekend to open the season, the Tigers will look to defend their Top 5 ranking in a high-stakes match in St. Louis. JHU is 2-1, its only loss on opening weekend having come at the hands of top-ranked Juniata. Preseason All-American Maddie Fate will look to continue her momentum from last weekend, as Trinity’s standout fifth-year senior tallied 28 kills over three matches, including 13 in the victory over in-state rival ETBU.
Other games we’ll be watching…
Hendrix at Centenary | Football | Saturday | 7 p.m. CT: Centenary makes its varsity football debut in Shreveport, one of two teams in Division III that will be playing its inaugural varsity season this fall. Can the Gents add to the historic evening by pulling off an upset? We’ll see.
Hardin-Simmons at Howard Payne | Football | Saturday | 6:00 p.m. CT: This was one of the best conference showdowns in the ASC last year, with HSU barely pulling out a 40-33 win over the Yellow Jackets. Both teams will have new quarterbacks, which adds to the intrigue of the ASC’s only matchup between conference teams in Week 1.
ETBU at Belhaven | Men’s Soccer | Saturday | 3:00 p.m. CT: In a duel between former conference rivals, ETBU will put its strong start to the test. Entering this week, the Tigers are the lone undefeated team in the ASC, at 2-0, having won a pair of close 2-1 matches over Dallas and Ozarks. Belhaven took down 20th-ranked Emory on the road last weekend, so there’s no question as to the Blazers ability to battle tough competition.
Concordia at Cal Lutheran | Women’s Soccer | Sunday | 12:00 p.m. CT: Cal Lutheran is the nation’s No. 1 team, but Concordia certainly has a chance to pull off the upset on the West Coast. The Tornadoes went stride-for-stride with UMHB on Monday before surrendering a goal in the 84th minute, and played D2 St. Edward’s to a 2-2 draw in the preseason. This is a tough Concordia squad who should be ready for the challenge.
“My parents' journey has inspired me to develop the mindset of a hard worker, have a go-getter spirit, and cling to family-centered morals. They have instilled avid patriotism in me for both Poland and the United States and staunch opposition to anything connected to communism. If someone says the American Dream is a lie, they need to give my parents a call! My father's athletic achievements as a DI athlete pushed me to strive for excellence in sports, and my mother's persistent work ethic motivated me to keep moving forward constantly.”
Mary Hardin-Baylor Defensive End Dominik Izydorczyk in an excellent Cru & A on Wednesday on football, the motivation gained from his hard-working parents, and his time at UMHB
Link to Cru & A
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