A look into Hartwell’s impressive head coach hiring record

With Gary Andersen out as head coach of Utah State’s football team, the future of the football team rests partly in the hands of USU Athletic Director, John Hartwell, who will be tasked with finding a new head man for the job. It will be one of his most anticipated hirings, on equal footing or perhaps ahead of Craig Smith in 2018 and Andersen’s re-hire that same year.

In just over five years, Hartwell has hired at least one head coach for 10 of the 14 athletic programs at Utah State. The teams he hasn’t hired a coach for are golf (Dean Johansen, hired in 2001), soccer (Heather Cairns, 2003), softball (Steve Johnson, 2013) and women’s tennis (Sean McInerney, 2013).

Fortunately for the confidence of Aggie fans, Hartwell’s record is rather good. The majority of his head-coaching hires have either built success in their programs or retained the success of their predecessors. In a subjective judgment, five of the seven head coaches who have coached at least one season have enjoyed success. Hartwell hired two coaches in 2020 who will embark on their first campaign this year.

Here is a comprehensive look at each of Hartwell’s head coaching hires.

James Wilson — Men’s Tennis (Three seasons, 2016-2019)

Record: 61-27

Wilson was the first of Hartwell’s hires to leave Utah State. He resigned after the 2019 season and became the associate head coach at South Florida.

The resignation of Wilson was quite the shame as his men’s tennis squad was arguably the best sports program at Utah State during his tenure. In just his first year as head coach, the team set a program record with 23 wins. USU won two Mountain West regular season and two MW conference tournament titles. The team also reached a program-best No. 37 overall ranking during Wilson’s tenure.

Amy Smith — Gymnastics (Three seasons, 2017-Present)

Record: 30-46-1

Don’t be fooled by that record, the first Coach Smith Hartwell brought on accomplished wonders with the gymnastics program last season, leading the team to its first winning record since 2013-14 and on of its best years in decades. She won Coach of the Year in the Mountain Rim Gymnastics Conference in 2020 and coached the MRGC Gymnast of the Year, Autumn DeHarde, and the MRGC Freshman of the Year, Sofi Sullivan. Smith also coached second-team All-MRGC gymnast Leighton Varnadore.

Had COVID-19 not cut off the season, Utah State would have gone to the NCAA Regional Championship for the first time in four years. The Aggies were ranked No. 29 in the NCAA, highest ever in program history, and were poised to rise even higher and potentially even win a conference championship.

Artie Gulden — Men’s and Women’s Cross Country (Three seasons, 2017-Present) | Matt Ingebritsen — Men’s and Women’s Track & Field (Three seasons, 2017-Present)

Gulden and Ingebritsen are somewhat of a joint package with the latter owning the title of Director of Track & Field and Cross Country programs along with being head coach of track & field. The two were hired at the same time and were dual replacements for Greg Gensel who coached both men’s and women’s cross country and men’s and women’s track & field for 34 years. The departure of Gensel may be one of the trickier situations Hartwell has likely had to deal with. Gensel is arguably the most successful coach in USU sports history but was quietly let go in late 2017. Utah State refused to publicly comment on why he left and rumors range from the benign to criminal and lawyers were reportedly involved. Gensel, according to reliable sources, never spoke out himself as he preferred to keep the story away from the public eye.

Even with the legendary Gensel gone, the cross country and track & field teams have kept on keeping on with generally the same amount of success as before and in some ways even better. Men’s cross-country team had one of its best years ever. The team was ranked No. 19 overall at seasons end and earned its first-ever Mountain West Conference championship plus its second-ever appearance at the NCAA Cross Country Championships where it had an all-time best finish of 16th overall. Gulden earned MW Coach of the Year.

Track & field wasn’t up to the level of cross country, but its throwing corps, whom Ingebritsen has directly coached as one of his primary roles in 17 overall years with USU, have produced two All-American honors while head coach — First-Team All-American javelin thrower Sindri Gudmundsson and honorable mention shot putter Brenn Flint. Five Aggies have combined for nine individual indoor and outdoor MWC titles under Ingebritsen.

Craig Smith — Men’s Basketball (Two seasons, 2018-Present)

Record: 54-15

After three uninspiring years of Tim Duryea (who was promoted to HC mere months before Hartwell came on), Craig Smith brought back life to a once-great men’s basketball team. Back-to-back Mountain West Tournament championships have Aggie fans positively giddy about this program and more success in the short future is practically a guarantee and likely until Smith departs.

This hiring alone has given Hartwell a reputation for bringing on good coaches.

Gary Andersen — Football (Two seasons, 2018-Present)

Record: 7-9

Yea, this one didn’t go so well and perhaps it isn’t quite on Hartwell. Rumor claims at least one booster pushed hard for Andersen to be hired on for a second time and possibly forced Hartwell’s hand in the matter. Whatever is true, Andersen’s second run at Utah State did not go well by any measure. His 7-6 record in 2019 fell far below fan expectations and the 0-3 start to 2020 was flat-out embarrassing. Utah State has fallen rather far from having four 9-plus win season between 2012 and 2018.

It should be noted that if the rumors of boosters pushing Andersen’s hire onto Hartwell are true, then the athletic director has not yet been responsible for a football coach hiring at USU as Matt Wells was hired before Hartwell took over.

Aaron Paajanen — Men’s Tennis (One season, 2019-Present)

Record: 3-11

Initial success was not on the menu for Paajanen even though he took over a program that had been highly successful for three straight seasons under James Wilson. A primary culprit would be the loss of four major contributors between 2018-19 and 2019-20. Rithvik Bollipalli, Isaac Arevalo Gomez, Duro Opacic and Jose Carvajal all left even though each player had eligibility remaining. Those four accounted for 86 of the 136 wins by USU players in 2018-19.

The entire conference schedule was cancelled, one non-conference game (eight regular season games in total) and obviously the conference tournament so maybe there was a turnaround in store, but it seems Paajanen will need time to rebuild the program back to where it was if he even do so.

Rob Neilson — Volleyball (2020 is first season)

The volleyball program is currently in the dumps with just seven wins in the last two seasons. Former head coach Grayson Dubose had considerable success as a two-time WAC Coach of the Year but, like many long-term coaches, had an ignominious end to his career.

Neilson can boast an impressive resume both as a player and a coach, both of which come almost exclusively at BYU. He could be just what USU volleyball needs to get back to better days.

Kayla Ard — Women’s Basketball (2020 is first season)

Just like USU’s volleyball team, women’s basketball has been in the dumpster with last year being among the worst in the program’s history. Jerry Finkbeiner never found consistent success in his seven seasons and his son, Ben, who coached the team as interim coach for the dismal 2019-20 season, was not retained.

Ard’s resume isn’t as rock-solid as Neilson’s, but she has a good record as a recruiter, especially among the junior college ranks. She was an interim head coach at Denver for the last 11 games of the Pioneers’ season and went 7-4 as the head coach. In 10 years as an assistant coach between five teams, Ard was primarily responsible for the offense and those offenses were usually very fast-paced.

@jwalker_sports

— sports@usustatesman.com