Irene Boehm, Sports Editor
Even before Saturday’s epic Sewanee Tigers game, the team’s new head coach was making an impression on the Mountain.
Coach Joe Freitag’s Tigers were behind 27-3 in the first half on Saturday but came roaring back to score 34 points against the Bethany College Bisons. Though Bethany’s 40-37 win after a driving rainstorm and a two-hour game delay prevented a storybook ending, Sewanee’s first game of the 2026 season suggests that the Tigers might be on their way to a long-awaited turnaround.
Even before the season opener, anyone who heard Freitag speak at the Monteagle-Sewanee Rotary Club came away with reason to hope. Though Freitag told the club that it might take a while to reach a winning season, he exuded confidence that it will come with rigorous recruiting, training, and rebuilding a close-knit student-athlete culture.
“Nobody likes losing. I love winning. I’m the worst loser in here, I promise you,” he told the gathering just before his players began arriving on the Mountain. “My whole goal is to get our team not to be result-oriented but driven by the process.”
Freitag spoke to the club last month, a few days before players returned to the Mountain. A club member’s introduction helped Freitag turn the meeting into the first gathering of the Sewanee Tigers faithful.
Before taking the Sewanee job late last year, the club member explained, Freitag spent 18 years coaching, first playing and then coaching at his and his wife Amy’s Illinois alma mater, Monmouth College. As a coach, Freitag helped guide his college team to 85-21, with five conference championships and four NCAA postseason appearances. His teams have included all-conference, all-region and all-American players.
”His focus is on developing young men, helping student-athletes grow as competitors, students, and leaders,” the club member continued. “He sees tremendous potential in Sewanee and is committed to building a disciplined, dynamic program that reflects the University’s traditions in academic excellence. He and his staff have already hit the ground running.”
Then Freitag began. Addressing a packed room that included a former Vice Chancellor, a not-really-retired director of Sewanee advancement, alumni and admissions, and more than a few nostalgic Sewanee alumni athletes, Freitag was quick to express excitement for the season and the incoming 43-member freshman class. Also among the newcomers are twins from Franklin County — Na’Zaiyah and Na’Shawn Holman.
“They played high school football for my offensive line coach, Justin Cunningham, who was the high school coach at Franklin County High School. They played at Carson Newman, and now they’re coming to us. So I’m really excited. Hopefully you see them score a bunch of touchdowns this fall.”
The twins touchdowns were highlights of Saturday’s game, as were efforts by other freshmen. Na’Zaiyah scored two touchdown catches, and Na’Shawn returned a 72-yard punt return for a touchdown and then scored again with a catch. On Defense, defensive Back Clay Woody marked his college debut by breaking up 4 Bison passes.
In his pre-season talk with the Rotary Club, Freitag was careful to balance excitement with managing expectations. He emphasized how much recruitment work he and his staff have done and how much more work it will take to assemble a winning team of players who are ready on the field and in the classroom..
“It takes good football players, and at Sewanee, it takes the right student, and that’s kind of a rare mix to get: a really high-caliber student, who’s also a very high-caliber athlete,” he said. “And then to get the right mix that wants to go to school in Tennessee up on a mountain.”
Freitag told the club that his coaches have hosted 200 recruitment visits and have 95 players on the current team – within close range of their ultimate goal of 100 talented teammates. Even so, he didn’t hedge about what he expects for this fall’s season.
“I’ve gotten a question a couple of times this morning: well, are you gonna be good? And now I’m gonna tell you guys that, like I always say, what’s the best thing about a first-year football player? They become a sophomore,” he said. “We’re gonna play some young players this year, especially up front with the big guys, on offense in particular. We’re gonna have a pretty young crew up front.”
He noted that the University has invested in a beefed-up weight room that will pay dividends. “Holy cow, it’s fantastic. But we gotta go spend a lot of time in there. And we need those guys not to be 18, but to be 21 years old, and to have been lifting weights and developing physically, and now all of a sudden, we’re cooking with gas.”
Even with great facilities and recruiting, he cautioned, reversing Sewanee’s recent record will take time. “I think most people in here would love to see the team go 5-5. I mean, I’ve seen the record here recently,” he said, adding that Sewanee hasn’t seen even a break-even 5-5 season since 2014.
Freitag was hired late last year after the dismissal of Head coach Andy McCollum, who led the Sewanee program for nearly three seasons. Several remaining team coaches and staff also left, so Freitag was tasked not only with recruiting but with hiring his own team of assistants. His result: a mix of Sewanee veterans and his own trusted colleagues.
They include Sewanee alumnus Andrew Holloway, who Freitag called “the smartest coach I have.” That Holloway works for his alma mater is also a plus, Freitag said.
“I got to do that for 11 years. It’s a pretty special thing to get asked to come back to a place where you played,” Freitag said. “He does everything for me. If I need a graphic for our parents’ welcome barbecue, he’s got it done by 7:15 in the morning, texts it to me, I make changes, and he’s already sent me another text with the update. It’s great. He’s my really young go-getter.”
Also on the staff is Justin Cunningham, who remained after the head-coaching transition.
“Every single person I met said, oh, you have to keep Justin Cunningham. He’s the best. And his nickname’s Country Ham, which tells you a lot about a person,” Freitag said. “He’s got this unique ability to make you feel better about yourself in a simple conversation. And he’s just a real positive guy, a really good teacher and a coach.”
Freitag brought down two Monmouth assistants, offensive coordinator Nate Graham and defensive coordinator Cooper Gosch.
“ If you see a really energetic guy coaching football and knows all the words to every song and does all the dances with our players, and he’s got some tattoos and a whole bunch of energy, that’s Nate,” Freitag said. “He played for me at Monmouth, graduated from college, and then we hired him back to coach receivers up in Illinois. So, like, Nate was around when our kids were both born. He’s like part of our family.”
“Cooper’s kind of my right-hand man,” he said. “It’s nice. I call the offense, I coach the quarterbacks, and it’s nice to know that I’ve got a coach overrunning our defense that’s got control of things and is a great human and a really good football coach on top of it.”
The staff special teams coordinator and linebacker coach is Joey Vaughn, a young leader with Division III coaching experience. Vaughn coordinates recruiting and data management as well, Freitag said.
Freitag underscored his growth plan by outlining his “philosophy” for success: four things he emphasizes, starting with recruiting and then “hammers into the team” every day.
“Number one, I talk about brotherhood,” he said. “In football, you get this unique sense of brotherhood. Because when we come to camp, we’re the only ones on campus for about a week before the other fall sports start to trickle in, and you get this unique bonding experience- you go through hard practice together. I think about the best friends in my life, the guys who were in my wedding, the guys who I stood in their weddings, guys who were gonna come down and see our games this year; they’re guys I played football with. Um, and you get that unique bond in college in particular.”
“Next up, I talk about sacrifice quite a bit. There’s a lot of sacrifice in football.”
“Maybe you were the star in high school, and all of a sudden you get to college, and now you don’t even play, and you’re playing scout team tight end, and you’re going against our all-conference defensive end, Jaden Gnagy, who’s the nicest human ever. But boy, is he scary when he’s in football pads. And now you’ve got to try to block that guy every day. And good luck. I’m telling you, it’s not going to go well for any of those freshmen. And so, there’s some sacrifice that’s involved in football, and there’s a lot of sweat equity. So I talk about that with the team.”
“The next thing I talk about is toughness.”
“There’s a brand of football we want to play, and it’s going to be a physical brand of football. And there’s no replicating that. Can you run the ball and get a first down? On third and one when you’re on defense? Can you stop the run? You better have some physical, tough guys out there playing for you. And that is something that’s gone by the wayside in football here recently. You got to have some element of toughness. You get down to the goal, and you’ve got to run the ball. There are moments where you just got to have it, right? And so you’ve got to recruit tough guys. There’s no — with all the rules and restrictions on practice, there’s no teaching them to be tough, to be honest. Guys either got it, or they don’t.”
“And then the last thing is having a growth mindset, ” he said. ”But boy, do we have a long way to go with this team.”
The Tigers’ grit on Saturday shows Sewanee’s football team may be on their way.