LINCOLN UNIVERSITY, PA. (June 11, 2009) – Lincoln University of Pennsylvania football coach Olabaniji Abanishe has been selected by the NCAA to participate in the 2009 NCAA Expert Coaches Forum from June 18-20 in Orlando (Fla.). The forum is being held in conjunction with the National Association of Collegiate Directors of Athletics (NACDA) convention.
The forum targets coaches with at least eight years of experience and is designed to improve and reinforce critical aspects of securing, managing and excelling in head football coaching positions at the intercollegiate level. Topics that will be covered during the three-day workshop include media training, fiscal responsibility, building a successful program, compliance issues and academic issues.
“I am extremely excited about being selected for the coaching academy,” Abanishe said. “Whenever you are chosen to be part of a prestigious event such as the expert coaching academy you should be proud and excited. I know there are many coaches whom apply each year for this event, but the NCAA selects only a few each year.”
Abanishe is the latest Lincoln staff member to participate in a coaching academy and/or professional development opportunity. Lincoln men’s and women’s tennis coach Ethel Watson participated in the NCAA Women’s Coaching Academy. In addition, Natasha Wilson (Assistant Athletics Director for Compliance & Senior Woman Administrator), Whitney Briggs (Lincoln Athletics Business Operation Manager) and Schannon Gamble (Volleyball Coach and Academic Coordinator) attended the NACWAA/HERS Conference.
“(Being selected for the Coaches Academy) means a great deal not to just me; but to my staff,” Abanishe said. “The coaching academy will allow me to better my coaching staff for their possible head coaching jobs in their future. I hope to learn what other coaches are doing in their programs to make their programs successful as well as sharing our procedures and policies in which will make us successful here at Lincoln University with other coaches.”
When hired in 2007, Abanishe was given the task of reviving a Lincoln football program that had been dormant since 1960. Playing a full schedule for the first time in 48 years, Lincoln finished with a 1-9 record last year.
He has been coaching for 10 years, including three at his alma mater, Langston University in Oklahoma. Abanishe was the offensive coordinator and quarterbacks coach at Langston University, an NAIA school. Under Abanishe, Langston had an explosive offense as evidenced by the Lions, finishing in top 10 nationally in scoring offense (38.5 points per game) and in the top 20 in total offense (388 yards).
Abanishe, better known as Coach O.J., began his coaching career at Langston University in 1998 as a tight end coach. In 1999, he coached the defensive line at Highland Junior College. From 2000-2002, Abanishe was the offensive coordinator and offensive line coach at Lane College. In 2003, he coached the offensive line at the University of St. Mary before returning to Langston.
Presenters at the forum include Ohio State AD Gene Smith, South Carolina AD Eric Hyman, Houston head football coach Kevin Sumlin (a graduate of the forum) and Bernard Franklin, NCAA executive vice president of membership and student-athlete affairs and former president at Virginia Union, Livingstone and Saint Augustine’s. Franklin spoke during Lincoln’s Athletics Banquet in April.
Other coaches selected to participate with Abanishe include James Joe (assistant head football coach, Miles) Frederick Reed (defensive coordinator, Buffalo) Cedric Pearl (offensive coordinator, Alabama A&M), Chris Vaughn (recruiting coordinator and defensive assistant, Mississippi ) Michael Morand, (co-offensive coordinator, North Carolina A&T), Alexander Wood (defensive coordinator, Wayne State -Nebraska), Robert Anae, (offensive coordinator, Brigham Young), Corey Batoon (assistant head coach and defensive coordinator, Northern Arizona), Payam Saadat (co-defensive coordinator, Army), Kurt Barber (defensive coordinator, Kentucky State), Shannon Jackson (defensive coordinator, Indiana State), Eric Jackson, (defensive backs coach, Princeton), Nigel Burton (defensive coordinator, Nevada), Darrell Perkins, (defensive backs coach and recruiting coordinator, Louisiana-Monroe), Chennis Berry (offensive coordinator and offensive line coach, North Carolina A&T), Herbert Parham (assistant head coach and defensive coordinator, Morgan State), Sherman Wood (head coach, Salisbury) and Stephon Healey (associate head coach, Bridgewater State).
The Expert Coaches Academy is an NCAA program that addresses the critical shortage of ethnic minorities in head coaching positions in the sport of college football, primarily at the Division I level. The Academy is designed to assist coaches with career advancement, networking and exposure opportunities.
The NCAA National Office is able to provide programming that better prepares coaches for many of the issues they will experience at the head coaching level through program sessions and networking opportunities with current head coaches and athletics administrators. The participants have expressed an interest in being a head coach at an NCAA college or university within their current division or in another NCAA division.
In addition to the Expert Coaches Academy, the NCAA Diversity and Inclusion group also directs the Future Coaches Academy for student-athletes, the Football Coaches Academy (less than eight years of experience) and the top tier most recently added program--the Champions Forum, which links participants from past Expert Coaches Academies with NCAA athletics directors who have hiring power and networks with other athletics directors.
Founded in 1854, Lincoln University is the first historically black institution of higher education and its graduates include such luminaries as Thurgood Marshall, the first African American justice of the United States Supreme Court, and acclaimed poet and author Langston Hughes. Lincoln University is nationally regarded for producing African Americans with undergraduate degrees in the physical sciences.
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