Joe Loth

In the summer of 2012, Joe Loth was named the 12th Head Football Coach at Western Connecticut State University. In 2018, he became the all-time winningest coach in program history. 

After having the 2020 season canceled due to the COVID pandemic, the Wolves went 5-5 in 2021.  WestConn completed the 2019 season with an 8-3 record, a bowl game and a second place finish in the MASCAC. That season, WestConn’s football program led the Massachusetts State Collegiate Athletic Conference (MASCAC) with 40 all-academic student-athletes in 2019. In 2020, it repeated with a league-best 54 All-Academic players. The 2019 campaign followed a 8-2 campaign in 2018 and a 7-3 season in 2017.

After inheriting a football program marred in a 21-game losing streak they were able to finish with an 8-2 overall in his second season in 2013. WestConn enjoyed a winning season (8-2) in this second season as a head coach for the first time since 2005 and first postseason appearance since 2001, a 48-35 ECAC Northeast Bowl victory against Salve Regina. In 2014, it followed this up with its second consecutive winning season (7-4) and a second-straight ECAC Bowl appearance against nationally ranked St. John Fisher. WestConn has not had a losing season since 2012.

Loth is the architect of the prolific Wolves' offense that has finished first or second in either scoring or total offense every year in the MASCAC. In 2019, the Colonials once again finished in the top two.

In 2013, WestConn averaged a school-record 43.8 points a game while allowing just 20 points to its opponents. Highlighting the Wolves' campaign was the effort from senior running back Octavias McKoy who broke nearly every WestConn rushing and scoring record in his final season. 

In a 55-35 victory over Worcester State University in October, McKoy ran into the national limelight after rushing for a then-NCAA-all-divisions rushing record of 455 yards. Loth and McKoy spent nearly two weeks making appearances on ESPN, The YES Network and numerous national, regional and local electronic and print media outlets.

He began his football career as a graduate assistant at Southern Methodist University (1991-92). He served as a coordinator at NCAA Division III schools: Western Connecticut State University (1993-96) and Capital University (1997-98). Loth coached a season at the University of Rhode Island (1999) before accepting his first head coaching job at Kean University in February 2000.

A 1991 graduate of Otterbein University, Loth returned to his alma mater as Head Football Coach in 2003, taking over a program that had just one winning season in the previous 23 years; the team was mired in an eight-game losing streak. Prior to his appointment at the greater Columbus area university, he served as Head Football Coach at Kean University. The Painesville, Ohio, native has taken part in rebuilding programs throughout his 20-year coaching career. He took over in Union, NJ after the Cougars endured a 14-game losing streak prior to his arrival.

“I am extremely excited about the opportunity of becoming the new Head Football Coach at Western Connecticut,” said Loth upon the announcement of his hiring. “The formula for winning at all levels of college football does not change. It is recruiting, retention, developing the student-athlete and running sound football schemes. We will relentlessly pursue excellence in all four of these areas at WestConn and in its move from the New Jersey Athletic Conference (NJAC) to the MASCAC.”

Loth holds the best winning percentage among football coaches with tenures of three or more seasons at Otterbein. The Cardinals set a school record for wins in 2008, going 9-2 overall and advancing into the NCAA Division III Football Championship for the first time in school history. Otterbein finished second in the Ohio Athletic Conference with an 8-1 record, with its lone conference loss coming at the hands of Mount Union, who went on to win the national championship. That season, Loth was named “OAC Football Coach of the Year” for the second time in his career as well as “Ohio Coach of the Year”.

Loth has worked as a guest coach in the Canadian Football League pre-season camps, coaching wide receivers or quarterbacks at Winnipeg in 2010-12,17 and Saskatchewan in 2009.

Loth was a four-year letterman and three-year starter at defensive back as an undergraduate at Otterbein. He earned second-team All-OAC honors his senior year in 1990 and held the Otterbein career record of 13 interceptions until 2012. He received his bachelor’s degree in Business.

In 2006, Loth was inducted into the Riverside High School Hall of Fame in Painesville, Ohio.

Loth and his wife, Keri, who graduated from Western Connecticut State University, have two sons, Zachary and Tyler.