University of Richmond Athletics
Richmond Football Adds Four To Coaching Staff
01/05/2010 | Football
Jan. 5, 2010
UNIVERSITY OF RICHMOND, Va. - Richmond football head coach Chad Wilt as the defensive line coach, Devin Fitzsimmons as the tight ends coach.
In addition, Scott has announced that third-year assistant coach Stacy Tutt, Bill Polin and Kevin Lewis remain in their previous roles for 2010.
"I'm very excited to add such quality individuals to our staff," said Scott, who was named the Spiders' head coach in December. "They are men of character, who each possess strong football backgrounds, that will be great fits here at the University of Richmond."
Lineburg, Wilt and Fitzsimmons previously worked with Scott at the University of Virginia, while Billingsley coached Scott during his days at Fork Union Military Academy.
On the Spiders' staff for three years from 2004-06 as the offensive coordinator and running backs coach under former head coach Dave Clawson, Wayne Lineburg coached Tim Hightower during the first three years of his record-setting career.
In 2005, Richmond gained a school-record 4,957 yards of total offense and scored 44 touchdowns. The offensive unit averaged 381.3 yards per game and ranked 41st in the country. Lineburg's offense averaged more than 330 yards per game every year and had an 800-yard rusher each season.
Lineburg, who played quarterback at Virginia and earned an undergraduate degree in government, has also spent time as assistant coach at William & Mary, where he received his master's degree in higher education. He spent the last three seasons on the Cavaliers staff as both a wide receivers coach (2007-08) and running backs coach (2009).
Chad Wilt joins the Spider staff after spending last season as the defensive line coach at Virginia and the previous three years as the defensive line coach and special teams coordinator at Liberty.
As a Flames assistant, he coached six defensive linemen and nine specialists who received All-Conference recognition, as well as five players who received All-America accolades. Liberty won two Big South conference championships.
In 2008, Liberty led the Big South in total defense, scoring defense and punt returns and ranked second in rush defense, while ranking third nationally in kickoff return yardage (25.56). The Flames were the only team in the country to return three kickoffs for touchdowns that season, setting a school record in the process.
A 2000 graduate of Taylor University in Upland, Ind. with a sports management degree, Wilt began his coaching career that year as a student assistant at Taylor before spending the spring of 2001 on the William & Mary staff and the next three years at Central Connecticut State.
Tripp Billingsley is no stranger to the Richmond Football program and joins Scott's staff after spending 13 years as an assistant coach at Fork Union Military Academy. Also at FUMA, he was a TAC Officer and worked directly with cadets on a day-to-day basis in matters of military training, discipline and preparation for life.
An All-Conference tight end at Randolph-Macon College, Billingsley earned his undergraduate degree in history from RMC in 1981 and received his master's in sports administration from Ohio State in 1984.
Billingsley, who has been a coach at the Spider Football camps since the mid-1990s, has previously served as a college assistant coach at Ohio State, Kent State and Virginia.
Devin Fitzsimmons was the graduate assistant for the Cavaliers last season and prior to that, spent two years at Kansas State where he was a graduate assistant for offense (2007) and coordinator of football operations (2008).
A native of New Orleans, La., Fitzsimmons played quarterback and wide receiver at Bucknell. In 2004, he won the Bucknell Football Moxie Award for special contributions to the program. He graduated in 2005 with a degree in history and a minor in religion.
His coaching career began with one season as the quarterbacks coach at Shaw University in Raleigh, N.C., before returning to his alma mater in 2006 as wide receivers coach.
Under the direction of new head coach Scott and his staff, the 2009 CAA Football Champion Spiders enter the off-season on the heels of an 11-2 campaign that ended with a last-second loss to Appalachian State in the NCAA Quarterfinals. In the last three season, Richmond has won the National Championship (2008) and two CAA Football titles (2007, 2009).
