Several formal Spartan football players are back to coach on the same field.

Tyler Higley was a four-year starter at Castleton University. He played on both sides of the ball during his four years, finding more success on defense. He led the team with seven interceptions in 2015 earning ECFC First-Team All- Conference and Team Defensive Player of the Year.

Now he’s the head coach. 

But since his years playing on the team, there have been numerous other players who have returned as alumni coaches. 

Team 16 has one of the highest numbers of VTSU Castleton alumni on the coaching staff. But what is it about VTSU Castleton that keeps the alumni coming back to coach? 

“I really looked up to my coaches,” said Higley, a 2017 graduate and first-year head coach. “I saw the growth between myself and some of my friends of growing up and becoming adults.” 

Higley expressed how much he had matured throughout his collegiate career and how football shaped him to become a better person. 

“I think I want to have an impact on people like that. Be a role model for them like be an adult involved in football, involved in their lives, and involved academically,” said Higley. 

This was a common theme among the alumni coaching staff. 

“I felt like I owed the guys I got to know from being a freshman, sophomore, junior, senior. I felt like I owed them the same type of love and appreciation that I got from the coaches that I had here through four years,” Defensive Line and Special Teams Coach Lukas Carlson said. “That’s my main drive as a coach, trying to replicate the experience I had here as a student.” 

Carlson smiles as he talks about his role as a coach. He reflects on how coaching has truly changed his life. 

“I started realizing people are looking up to me looking for a role model, inspiration, words of encouragement that I never really gave myself,” Carlson said. 

This took him maturing in the real world and finding his self-worth throughout his collegiate career. Carlson had found his self-worth through coaching, realizing his life was bigger than just stats on a sheet from a football game. 

“I still talk to all my buddies here who are football players and not players, they are going to be in my wedding,” said Carlson. 

The VTSU football team has a mission statement that ends with “While establishing lifelong friendships and memories.” 

“The guys you played with are legitimately your friends for the rest of your lives,” said 

Higley.

Friendships and memories are a core part of the football program and continue to 

be passed down through generations of players. You can see this with how many alumni coaches are still around and talk to prior teammates to this day. 

“The friendship and memories piece is the most special, you know, and going to people’s weddings,” Wide Receivers Coach Zachary Howe said. “All really, really special people I would have never met if I didn’t play football here.” 

Howe reflected on how football shaped him as a person and truly made him work harder in school. 

“I can’t say it kept me off the streets, but it kept me off the streets. I can’t say it kept me in the textbooks, but it kept me in the textbooks because I wanted to be eligible and I 

didn’t want to make a mistake out there,” Howe said. “Football helped me personally stay out of trouble, gain experience, discipline, hard work, teamwork, focus.” 

The coaches said for them, football is more than just a sport. It also helps build character and shape boys into men. 

“Definitely was special about the friendships and memories we made. Met a lot of great friends from different states. We all still keep in touch with each other,” Assistant Wide Receivers Coach Chance Fee said. “We actually have my college roommate’s wedding next weekend, so all of us are getting back together.” 

Fee was given the opportunity to become a graduate assistant for the VTSU Castleton Athletics Department. Throughout this year of being around sports, he realized how much he missed being a part of the football program here. 

“Last spring, I was asked to help coach during spring ball,” Fee said. “When I was asked to coach, I had no hesitation.” 

“I love being here still and love being able to give back to the program that has given me so much over the past four years. And being able to teach these new kids what I’ve learned over the years and being able to pass down the learnings has been a great experience,” he said. 

Fee is a very young coach but has a big heart for the athletics programs. He continues to learn how to inspire young adults while advancing in his coaching career. 

“Being a young coach learning from Coach Higley, Coach Brehmeyer, Coach Carlson, Coach Howe, and Coach Cav, being able to be with them has taught me so much and I am very grateful for it,” Fee said. 

Being able to learn from a young age and having older mentors is important in the coaching industry. Coaching is not an easy and typical job. 

“It’s a lifestyle job, not like a normal job,” Higley said. “Whether you’re here or at home you’re thinking of your job.” 

Higley explains how difficult and consuming being a football coach is. You spend hours in an office watching film and game planning for the next opponent, then go out on the practice field for a few hours. Coaching is all over the place and involves lots of traveling, he said. 

“When Coach Higley was hired and he said he needed a quarterbacks coach, I didn’t even hesitate,” Quarterbacks Coach Andrew Cavanagh said. “Zero hesitation type of thing where I just couldn’t wait to come back and give back to the program that helped build me as a player and gave me the opportunities that I had.” 

Cavanagh has a special connection with not only this program but with the other coaches. Higley was his ball boy in high school and Coach Jordan Wright, the defensive backs coach at VTSU Castleton, went to Brattleboro High School. 

“Building the long-lasting friendships, Coach Howe was a teammate of mine here. Now, flash forward 14 years to be able to coach with him after having formed those relationships and friendships as teammates, and now to be able to reunite and build more memories is special,” Cavanagh said. 

This reunion within the program has brought a stronger connection between the players and coaches. 

“Great decision to come back and a lot of happy memories,” said Howe 

“I can’t imagine doing anything else,” Higley said. “The best decision I’ve ever made.”