There will be a change of command in the athletic department at Northwestern College.
Barry Brandt, Northwestern College’s athletic director since 2000, will step down to the associate athletic director’s role this summer as he prepares to retire in May 2015. Dr. Earl Woudstra, the assistant athletic director since 2004, will become athletic director this June 1.
Brandt, a 1969 Northwestern College alumnus, has served the college for 31 years. After a year of part-time coaching in the early 1970s, he began full-time employment in 1984 as the head men’s and women’s track coach and assistant football coach. He served as assistant athletic director for four years before taking the department’s helm.
During Brandt’s tenure as athletic director, Northwestern teams have won seven NAIA national championships (men’s basketball in 2001 and 2003 and women’s basketball in 2001, 2008, 2010, 2011 and 2012) and the athletic department’s staffing has grown so that nearly all of the head coaches are full-time college employees. Facility upgrades have included major improvements to the football field and outdoor track at De Valois Stadium and the soccer complex. Northwestern is currently raising funds for a new indoor athletic practice and training facility.
Brandt has been very active at the NAIA and Great Plains Athletic Conference levels. In 2006–07 he was named the GPAC Athletic Director of the Year. He has served on several NAIA committees and task forces and was the president of the NAIA Athletic Directors Association in 2011–12.
“Barry has been a tireless promoter of Northwestern athletics,” says Greg Christy, Northwestern’s president. “He has derived great joy from coaching and administering young people in various sports at Northwestern, and we have been blessed by his faithful service. One of his greatest accomplishments has been assembling our coaching staff. Barry has hired every head coach we have, and collectively they are an outstanding group of coaches, recruiters and developers of young people who personify the mission of Northwestern as a Christian academic community.”
“There’s no doubt Barry has a love for Northwestern and the students here,” says Woudstra.
“One of his legacies is the challenge he has given coaches to use our positions to spread the gospel. Personally, he was a great source of encouragement to me as a coach.”
Woudstra, the incoming athletic director, has also been a 31-year Northwestern employee. He served as part-time JV men’s basketball coach from 1978 to 1984 while directing Orange City’s parks and recreation department. He began full time as a faculty member in the kinesiology department in 1989. During his tenure he has coached women’s tennis and most notably women’s basketball, leading his teams to national championships in 2001, 2008, 2010 and 2011. He was named NAIA National Coach of the Year each of those seasons and inducted into the NAIA Hall of Fame in 2012 after retiring from coaching the previous year.
