Just a few weeks removed from deciding to not renew the contract of head coach Mike Kellar after seven seasons at the helm, Glenville State (D-II – WV) has found their new leader.
Jake Casteel, a defensive assistant at West Virginia where he worked with the linebackers, has accepted the head coaching job at the proud Division II program that has twice finished national-runner up and captured nine conference titles.
Casteel, whose coaching veteran father Jeff coaches the Bandits for the Mountaineers, has spent the past two seasons with Rich Rodriguez at Jacksonville State and West Virginia. At Jacksonville State, he served as a defensive analyst while also working with the Sams.
A former standout at Northern Arizona, he got his coaching start at his alma mater as a graduate assistant in 2019 before taking graduate assistants job on the defensive side of the ball at Boist State (2020) and West Virginia (2021).
He landed his first full-time coaching post at Cal Poly (FCS) in 2022 as linebackers coach and co-special teams coordinator.
This marks Jake’s first opportunity to run his own program after learning from some top-notch head coaches earlier in his career.
At Glenville State, he takes over the program that Rich Rodriguez served as head coach for from 1990-1996, compiling a 43-28-2 record with four straight first-place finishes in the West Virginia Intercollegiate Athletic Conference, before he left to become the offensive coordinator at Tulane and then Clemson prior to landing the West Virginia head coaching job for the first time.
The program just wrapped up a 6-5 season in Kellar’s final year at the helm, and went 7-4 in 2024.
Well regarded for his recruiting approach, the school praised Casteel’s ability as an “aggressive recruiter” in their release.