Sources – Wake Forest’s Dave Clawson stepping down as coach

Wake Forest head soccer coach Dave Clawson is stepping down after 11 seasons and is anticipated to stay with the college in an advisory position, sources instructed ESPN on Monday.

The advisory position will embrace working with athletic director John Currie, the varsity president and board of trustees on athletics points. Clawson can be anticipated to play a giant position in fundraising on the college, sources instructed ESPN.

Clawson led Wake Forest to seven consecutive bowl video games throughout a run that included top-10 appearances in 2021 and 2022. Those are the best Associated Press ballot rankings in Wake Forest historical past.

The determination to step down was Clawson’s, sources instructed ESPN, as he felt it was time. Sources in contrast the choice to latest strikes made by Virginia basketball coach Tony Bennett and former Washington soccer coach Chris Petersen, who each stepped away partly due to the altering period within the sport.

Clawson had been mulling the choice in latest weeks, sources mentioned, and had been in communication with college officers about it earlier than formally notifying them Monday.

Clawson, 57, is anticipated to take a 12 months off from teaching to recharge and refresh after working as a head coach for 25 of the previous 26 seasons. He’s the one coach in NCAA historical past to guide 4 Division I applications — Fordham, Richmond, Bowling Green and Wake Forest — to double-digit wins in a season. He has turned down curiosity from a number of faculties’ head teaching jobs over time, opting to remain at Wake Forest.

Clawson is thought to be the varsity’s finest fashionable coach. He leaves with a report of 67-69, one of the best successful share of any Wake Forest soccer coach because the college joined the ACC in 1953. He led Wake Forest to seven of the 17 bowl video games at school historical past and 5 of the varsity’s 11 whole bowl wins.

Clawson’s highlights embrace taking Wake Forest to the ACC title sport in 2021, main the Demon Deacons to 3 consecutive wins over Florida State from 2019 to 2021, and getting a victory over Texas A&M within the Belk Bowl.

The headwinds of the present period of school soccer over the previous two years at Wake Forest sophisticated how Clawson constructed groups. He’d redshirt gamers to have older rosters, and leaned on continuity and participant improvement as aggressive benefits. The lack of ability to retain prime expertise financially, as a result of NIL and the switch portal, has blunted the effectiveness of Wake Forest’s edges.

There have been loads of breadcrumbs to Clawson’s frustration, and he has hinted at Wake Forest’s NIL limitations because the Demon Deacons have gone 4-8 in every the previous two seasons.

After a loss to Louisiana of the Sun Belt earlier this season, Clawson defined his frustration: “To repair issues, you want some huge cash. And we recruited what we might afford.”

Wake Forest members believed that in some video games this season, particular person gamers on the opposing workforce had larger NIL offers than Wake Forest’s whole roster. NIL numbers aren’t public, which make such claims tough to confirm, however Wake’s NIL was believed to be close to the underside of the 17-team ACC.

For the 2023 season, Wake Forest star quarterback Sam Hartman left to play his closing season of eligibility at Notre Dame. Clawson needled Notre Dame for a video tribute to Hartman on Senior Night, saying, “Here’s a man that we recruited and we developed and so they’re placing a video on him saying, ‘We will all the time love you.'”

He added: “You solely dated him a few months. It cannot be love. We’re those that love him. We had 5 years with him. You rented him for a season. … When that video performed, it was like, ‘Holy cow, that is the place faculty soccer is.'”

The tenor of these feedback popped up a number of instances this season as Wake misplaced key defenders to both the switch portal or early entry into the NFL draft as a result of it could not afford the market fee for them. Overall, Wake Forest has misplaced greater than a dozen starters the final two-and-a-half years to the portal or the draft.

In latest feedback about Mack Brown’s departure at North Carolina, Clawson provided some unintentional perception into an element on his personal determination.

“It’s simply the path wherein issues are headed,” Clawson mentioned in late November. “Many gamers now, if they do not have the precise position they need by Years 2 or 3, are more likely to go away. In some circumstances, that works out for them, and in others, it does not.

“I imagine that with lots of the gamers who left, if that they had simply stayed another 12 months and been affected person, their roles right here would have in all probability aligned with what they needed.”