After spending four years out of state coaching women’s college basketball, Jim Wiedie yearned for a homecoming and found his way back by becoming the new Hiram Terriers women’s basketball coach, being formally announced on April 3.
“It has been something that I have been trying to make happen,” the first-year coach said. “Things didn’t fall into place, and I have been praying about it for a long time and finally this opportunity came open It just seemed perfect. It seemed where I am supposed to be, being 35 miles from home and have an opportunity to be a head coach again and be in charge of a program so it has been exciting. I could not have asked for a better scenario.”
Wiedie succeeds Alexandra Dellas as the 13th head coach in program history, after Dellas stepped down from her post after nine years at the helm. Wiedie has coached women’s college basketball for 35 years, with 22 of them coming as a head coach. He returns to Northeast Ohio after recently coaching at Nebraska Wesleyan University in Lincoln, NE.
After being hired at Nebraska Wesleyan University in 2024, Wiedie stepped away from the program last November for personal reasons and decided that he was ready to return home.
Upon seeing the opening at Hiram listed, the 1988 Kent State University alum immediately applied and said that Athletic Director Scott Pohlman quickly reached out. In a span of a week, he had a phone interview with Pohlman and visited the campus.
According to Wiedie, he developed a strong rapport with Pohlman, citing his respect for Pohlman’s previous experiences as a head college athletic coach himself.
“I think it is different than athletic directors who have not coached,” noted Wiedie. “They get it and they understand the challenges that coaches have and the fact that Scott had been a head coach solidified everything. and, o\On my way back to Nebraska, he called me and offered the job and accepted it on the spot. It was a whirlwind.”
Across 35 years of coaching women’s college basketball, Wiedie has collected 312 victories, having coached at Northern Kentucky University, Indiana State University, Otterbein University, the University of Findlay, Missouri Western State University, University of Nebraska Omaha and Nebraska Wesleyan University.
Although it is only the second Division III collegiate head basketball coaching position Wiedie has held, he said that there is plenty of talent to be scooped up into the collegiate ranks across the State of Ohio, especially through Summit, Portage and Stark Counties, areas he knows well as a graduate of Akron Springfield High School.
“I am looking for certain things. I am looking for kids who are high achievers, kids who excel academically. I think there is a direct correlation between a work ethic in the classroom and a work ethic on the court,” he said. “I want gym rat kids and kids that want to compete and want to be the best at everything that they do and those are the type of kids that I am trying to recruit and am trying to follow that at every level that I have been at.”
After wrapping up his high school career at Akron Springfield, Wiedie’s first coaching role came when he was a student at the Kent State University Stark Campus, assisting his old high school assistant coach with the girls’ team and decided that he wanted to pursue a career as a collegiate basketball coach.
Hailing from neighboring Summit County, Wiedie said that there are a lot of similar values he can draw from the neighboring Summit and Portage County basketball programs.
“We have so many Division III schools here in Ohio and some really good teams, so the competition is going to be a little different for recruiting but I still try to identify the same type of player,” he noted.
Wiedie inherits a Hiram program that has only recorded 75 victories, including 34 conference victories between the North Coast Athletic Conference and the Presidents’ Athletic Conference.
Wiedie acknowledged that Hiram’s victories have been scarce especially in conference play but added that Terriers are closer to rising to the top of the PAC than they think because it is more of a level playing field in the PAC landscape and he will draw on his previous experiences turning other programs around to revitalize the Hiram women’s program.
“An example would be at Indiana State when I was there,” he said. “I was an assistant coach then was promoted to the interim head coach and the program was not very successful when I first took over as interim head coach but then by year three, we won the conference.”
