Mount Mercy University announces it will sponsor a varsity football program

CEDAR RAPIDS — The Robert W. Plaster Athletic Complex opened in 2017, with baseball and softball facilities and a full-fledged football stadium with an immaculate turf field. That was even though Mount Mercy University didn’t have a football team.

The stadium has been used by the school’s men’s and women’s soccer, track and field and women’s lacrosse teams exclusively. So as not to interfere with any of those endeavors, the goal posts at each end of the stadium always have pointed away from the field.

Get ready to turn those babies around.

Mount Mercy announced Friday it will begin a varsity football program for the 2026 season. The school is a member of the NAIA and Heart of America Athletic Conference, with full members in Missouri, Kansas and Nebraska, as well as fellow Iowa schools Grand View, Clarke, Graceland and William Penn.

Saint Ambrose University in Davenport, which recently purchased Mount Mercy, is an affiliate member of the league.

“This facility, which opened in late September 2017, without any question created an advantage for our outdoor sports programs,” Mount Mercy Athletics Director Paul Gavin said at an outdoor press conference. “Yet one of the questions then and now has been when will we start football? Even after doing a positive, in-depth feasibility study in 2016, our board of directors decided to put a pause on the football discussion with the phrase ‘No, for now.’ That’s been the standard for several years.

“Today I am excited to announce we are adding a new sport. It is without any hesitation and with support from our board of trustees that it is now time to say, and I quote ‘Yes, for football.’”

Gavin pointed out that Mount Mercy has begun programs in other sports such as lacrosse, bowling and competitive dance and cheer. The official number of varsity athletes at the school has grown from the high 300s in 2015 to over 600 right now.

Obviously that number will grow exponentially with football. Unlike NCAA Division III schools like Coe and Cornell, Mount Mercy awards athletics scholarships.

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“We will scholarship (football) similarly to how we scholarship our other programs,” Gavin said. “We don’t go on a number of scholarships, there is an NAIA limitation, and we’re going to stay at that. But we stack scholarships here. So we look for really good students who get strong academic (scholarships). Then we provide athletic scholarships based on their talent level.”

Gavin said the school hopes to have a head coach in place as soon as possible, though the timing of the announcement isn’t ideal since this football season is well underway. The job will be officially posted imminently, and Mount Mercy is using a regional sports consulting group to help with the process.

“The head football coach search is probably the most important decision we’ll make here. This individual has to be the right fit,” Gavin said. “We are anticipating an incredible amount of interest, and we hope to have initial conversations with candidates within the next two weeks, with the ultimate desire having a new head coach on campus as soon as possible, depending on their situation.

“This coach needs to be a winner. One who can build a program from the ground up, who has a dynamic personality that can recruit and fundraise and (be) a prominent face in this community for years to come. That long-term commitment is something we are really going to stress.”

Mount Mercy joined the Heart of America Conference in 2016 after a year as an NAIA independent due to the breakup of the Midwest Collegiate Conference. It was admitted with the promise of someday adding football, though that requirement was changed.

For instance, league member Park University in Missouri does not offer the sport.

“Athletics are very important to the health of our campus, as they are for many small private colleges,” Mount Mercy University President Todd Olson said. “Adding football will not only allow us to increase enrollment, but will also enrich the vibrancy of our student experience and provide more opportunities to bring alumni and community members to our campus.”

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