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Pitt State’s Head Football Coach, Brian Wright, joined the Gorillas in 2019 after making his coaching journey from Ohio and across the nation.
Wright was born in Goldsboro North Carolina. He finished high school at Wooster Highschool in Ohio where he went to college right after. Wright focused on football and baseball during high school, but football became his main sport in college as he played for the Fighting Scots of Wooster during his academic career.
Coaching football has always been a dream for Brian Wright, and such a dream started becoming a reality towards the end of his college career.
“After forming a relationship with my head coach, I realized that it was something I wanted to do,” Wright said.
Wright started working at the National City Bank in Cleveland after graduating college. He was part of the management training program but after five months he realized coaching was his real passion, and began his first official coaching job as a graduate assistant at Walsh University, Ohio.
After a few years coaching and few different universities, Brian Wright signed with Pitt State on Dec. 9, 2019.
“I chose Pitt State because I wanted to be a head coach in a place where football is important for the school and the community,” Wright said. “I wanted to be somewhere where the expectations are high and where I thought we had the support to compete and win at a high level.”
Wright was expecting a regular season as many were, but the outbreak of Corona Virus at the beginning of 2020 became a new obstacle for Wright and his staff.
“The pandemic was an obstacle we had to tackle and overcome in order to make the very best of it,” Wright said. “We found a lot of new ways to do that and got very creative on our approach once we learned how to deal with the virus and still practice and play while keeping everybody safe.”
The Gorillas had the opportunity to play a few games during the 2020 season and finished with a 2-2 overall.
“Win every game was certainly the goal, but we left a couple opportunities out there, so we have to learn and get better from that,” Wright said. “We did the best we could considering we didn’t get all the games and practice time you would get on a regular season, but we made the most of it.”
Although Wright had to deal with the pandemic during his first season, he said it will be one for the books. Strengths and weaknesses were identified, and plans were made in order to improve for next season.
“We were able to really formulate our plan in 2021 based of what we did last season,” Wright said.
After his first year as a head football coach for PSU, a few memorable moments were already made.
“The moments that stand out to me is just being with our team and the process we were part of,” Wright said. “I think about our first spring and summer practices, about celebrating the win at West Texas in the locker room with the team and just being at the hotel with the guys, those are some of my highlight moments this past season.”
As the new year begins, new expectations are set in place for the upcoming season and head coach Brian Wright and his staff are ready to tackle every obstacle in front of them.
“I am excited to see how we individually get better and to see our team collectively gets better for the upcoming season,” Wright said.
Spending time with the players and coaches is Wright’s favorite part about the program.
“Being part of a process with that group of players and staff and putting a plan to get better and watching us execute that plan is very satisfying,” Wright said.
