January 5, 2015
Bluffton University has named Rhonda Gottschalk as its head women's soccer coach.
Gottschalk, an assistant coach at Bowling Green State University the last two years, is the first full-time head coach in Bluffton women's soccer history. Patrick (Rick) Nussbaum has been both the head men's and women's soccer coach since 2010 and, with the duties now split, has become the first full-time head coach of the men's program.
At Bowling Green, Gottschalk worked with goalkeepers, including one who led the Mid-American Conference in 2014 both in saves—a school-record 146—and saves per game.
Gottschalk was previously an assistant women's coach at Youngstown State University in 2012—the most successful season in the program's history—and at Duquesne University from 2010-11. From 2007-10, she was an assistant women's and men's coach at Ashland University.
Gottschalk earned her bachelor's degree in education, physical education and health in 2006 from Concord University in Athens, West Virginia. During her four-year playing career at the NCAA Division II school, she was a two-time captain who received all-conference honorable mention in 2002—when her team won the West Virginia Intercollegiate Athletic Conference title—and second-team all-conference honors in 2003.
Also at Concord, she was a founding member and president of Student Athlete Mentors, vice president of the Student Athlete Advisory Committee and, in 2006, recipient of the Senior Scholar Athlete Award. In 2005-06, she was a student assistant coach as well.
Gottschalk, who completed a master's degree in applied exercise science at Ashland in 2009, has directed soccer camps at Bowling Green and Youngstown State, has been an assistant camp director at Duquesne and has coached at other college-based camps. The Greencastle, Ind., native has also been a soccer club coach in Ohio, Pennsylvania, Indiana and West Virginia, and holds several coaching certifications.
In addition to her coaching duties at Bluffton, she will have teaching responsibilities in the university's academic department of health, fitness and sport science.
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