Penn Assistant Maurice ‘Moe’ Banks Will Lead Gettysburg Football Program
Maurice Banks, the new head coach of the Gettysburg College football team (Photo courtesy of Gettysburg College Athletics)
By Benjamin Pontz, Editor-in-Chief
Maurice “Moe” Banks, currently the Outside Linebackers Coach at the University of Pennsylvania, has been named the 26th Head Coach of the Gettysburg College football team. He succeeds Kevin Burke, who left the program in December after two seasons during which the team posted a combined record of 2-18.
Banks coached at Penn, a Football Championship Subdivision (FCS, formerly division I-AA) program, for one season and previously spent five years coaching defensive backs (during the last two of which he also coached special teams) at his alma mater, Georgetown. He has also coached internationally in Brazil and Austria.
In a release announcing Banks’ hiring, Executive Director of Athletics Mike Mattia said that Banks stood out in a “very talented pool.”
“He is an extremely competitive person with a strong sense of values and principles,” Mattia added. “His experience coaching in the Patriot and Ivy Leagues provides him the understanding of the high academic and high athletic achievement we are looking for in our prospective student athletes.”
Mattia had previously expressed a desire to hire a coach who would help turn around a program whose last winning season was in 2015, and Banks said that among his goals is to improve the team’s on-field performance.
“My immediate goal is to start working towards building a culture that values success with character,” he said. “We want to give our student-athletes a great experience during their time at Gettysburg, and part of that experience is winning. But we also want to build great young men who will go on to be great husbands, fathers, co-workers, and leaders while representing Gettysburg College well when they graduate.”
Banks is the first person of color to serve as head coach of the Gettysburg football team and is only the second African-American to head a Centennial Conference football program since the conference was created in 1983.
Banks will be formally introduced at a press conference Tuesday afternoon.
