Joe Sagar, the Assistant Director of Residential Life and assistant soccer coach to the Augustana men and women’s soccer teams, will begin a new job as the head women’s soccer coach at Lawrence University on Friday, April 13.
“Coaching has always been a real passion, I was a student athlete myself – I played soccer in college – and I’ve always wanted to stay involved with it. As much as I’ve enjoyed residential life and that experience, my real passion is working with college athletes and representing an institution and competing. So when I was able to go and do that full-time, I jumped at that opportunity,” Sagar said.
Sagar began his time at Augustana in July of 2014 as an area coordinator in Andreen Hall and was promoted to Assistant Director of Residential Life in March of 2015. As assistant director, his responsibilities primarily involve incoming students’ housing assignments. Secondarily, Sagar’s duties include CA training, supporting the director, hearing conduct cases, teaching alcohol education classes, being the campus medical coordinator, and helping CA’s when needed.
“I am going to miss being there when parents are worried about their loved ones and I get to go ‘Mrs. Smith, it’s going to be okay. We’re going to take care of your little one and make sure that they’re gonna go to class, we’re gonna help them get through, we’re going to see them in the hospital, it’s going to be okay,’” Sagar said.
“From the student side, helping them figure out how to be themselves—I’m going to miss that—to be that person who can be a sound board and treat them like adults and treat them honestly, and to challenge them from a place of care and love.”
Sophomore Alex Ligeza is on the men’s soccer team and said, “we’re really sad to see him go. It’s going to be a tough hole to fill. We’re all excited for him, as sad as we are, to see him take that next step in his career and see what he can do with the program with his own ideas. I just want him to know how thankful we are for having given us the opportunity to learn under him and share his soccer knowledge with us. We’ll take what we learned from him and move forward with it and hopefully we can see him sometime down the road.”
“What I’m going to miss about the soccer teams is their spirit and their desire to get better. I’m going to miss the inside jokes and the relationships that we’ve created. I’m going to miss working with them every day from August ‘til May—that’s going to be tough to walk away from,” Sagar said.
Taking over as Assistant Director of Residential Life is Michelle Mason.
“Joe has taught me how to switch over to be a professional instead of just like a grad student who is helping. How he handles himself, especially when we go into student meetings when a student is really upset—I really appreciated learning from him in those instances and emergency situations. We’ve had some things happen in the last three years that I don’t think I would’ve known how to handle without him showing me what to do,” Mason said. “I’m really excited, but I know there are really big shoes to fill.”
Photo above: Joe Sagar. Photo by Kevin Donovan