Hamline football coach gets down to basics

Josiah Walker got his first taste of coaching while in high school in New Jersey. “I began coaching Pop Warner… I did volunteer hours. That was one of my prerequisites before graduating,” explained Walker, an assistant coach working with the linebackers at Hamline. 

“That was one of the reasons I began coaching. I kind of fell in love [with it].”

Walker credits his high school coaches as well as the athletic director for their guidance to him as a student athlete. “They helped me look for colleges when I was looking to play at the next level,” he recalled. “They were my support system as well as my family.”

Now in his second season of college coaching at Hamline, Walker previously was the running backs coach at Mayville (ND) State (2023), where he also earned two degrees (B.A. in business administration and management, and M.A. in adult and continuing education and teaching). 

I also got to watch him work one-on-one with a player after a two-hour preseason morning practice. “With individual conversation with each player,” he explained, “they let you know what they need for that moment. After practice is over with, they have more time to kind of take a breath and understand.

“Slowing down [after practice], everything is quiet,” continued Walker. “Now it allows them to understand.”

Walker briefly shared his coaching philosophy: “I’m always trying to push the people that I’m talking to, no matter who it is, to push them to the greatest potential. Why not try to be better than what you were yesterday? Always strive for greatness.

“[Players] may have different verbiage in high school, and then they come to college and they’re like, ‘Coach, I don’t know what you’re talking about,” surmised the coach. “That’s why I always try to break everything down on being great because you want to be great.  

“No matter what level that you have to get in, you have to teach from basic to basic, the A, B, Cs, then teaching the techniques,” he said. “We just have to talk in their language, and then it kind of grips a little bit more for them.”