Noah Kent ’25 took a leap of faith to come to Wabash as an injured football player from Tampa, Florida. Now he sees
God’s hand in the journey all along.
Senior year of high school was a fresh start on the gridiron for Noah Kent ’25. He’d had the surgeries. He’d done the rehab for his hip, knee, and elbow. He was finally healthy. The recruiters were calling. He was ready for the payoff.
The last game of the season, he felt a familiar pain rip through his knee. Dislocated—for the third time—the latest surgical repair undone. Suddenly, the phone wasn’t ringing quite so often. But Wabash persisted.
“I was the worst recruit possible,” Kent says. “I wasn’t texting the Wabash coach back or giving him the time of day. I told God, ‘I’m not going to Wabash. I’m not doing it.’ I heard God say, ‘Yes, you will.’”
Five days before his third surgery, Kent, from Tampa, Florida, was visiting a school in Ohio when he received another call from Wabash encouraging him to visit campus. Since he was within a few hours, he decided to take a quick detour through Crawfordsville.
“As soon as I got onto campus, I instantly knew,” he recalls. “I hadn’t even met anybody yet, but I knew I was supposed to be at Wabash.”
Barely into his 13 months of recovery, Kent moved a thousand miles from home to join the Little Giant football team.
“I had zero idea what I was getting myself into. I didn’t know anybody. I got to campus, and it was really hard,” Kent says. “I was a part of the football team, but because I was injured, I felt distant from everybody. I cried my first day at training camp.
“I remember telling God, ‘If you’re going to have me here, you have got to give me people,’” he continues. “Within a couple weeks, I met some of my best friends. Those guys kept me afloat.”
But in December of his freshman year, Kent was at an all-too-familiar crossroads.
“Am I going to keep playing or am I not?” he recalls asking himself. “I had stayed in football throughout all the injuries because I felt like God wanted me there to make an impact on people. In high school, I asked, ‘Why am I still playing? I’m always injured.’ I never understood it. I got to the end of my first semester at Wabash, and I was in the same boat.
“My dad told me, ‘You should pray about it. If you’re going to make a big decision, have some peace of mind,’” Kent continues. “I had peace with not playing the game anymore, but I didn’t have peace with leaving it altogether, because I love football. I love it.”
In 2021, Kent’s first semester, CJ Ramsey ’20 was in his first year as a full-time assistant coach at Wabash. Ramsey had been a student coach for four years and then a volunteer coach for an additional year. Interacting with Ramsey helped Kent realize he could still be involved without playing.
“Noah grew to be an asset on our staff throughout his time at Wabash,” Ramsey says. “It seemed like he was starving to consume all things football. He was so easy to work with and always asked great questions. He threw himself at coaching with everything he had.”
As Kent gained more responsibility, he felt more and more confident in his new role.
“I started to find my voice on the field, and I loved every minute of it,” he says. “As soon as I got into coaching, I knew it was what I want to do with my life.”
Head Football Coach Jake Gilbert ’98 quickly recognized the talent and energy Kent brought to the coaching staff.
“We used him in a bigger role last season, which allowed him to flourish,” says Gilbert. “He just needed the opportunity to put in the work and take ownership for a bigger piece of the puzzle. We provided that, and he delivered.”
That role was coaching a position he hadn’t coached before. It meant putting in a lot of extra effort beyond practices and on top of his rigorous coursework.
“He put so much time into learning football and learning how to be a better coach,” says Ramsey. “He drove to countless camps, sat in on meetings he wasn’t required to attend, and spent hours in our offices trying to learn as much as possible.”
Kent also reached out to coaches in similar positions at other schools asking for help. He finally found an assistant coach that would talk with him—Logan McCormick, who is currently the defensive line coach at South Dakota State University (SDSU). Kent spent hours on the phone asking questions of the patient coach.
Kent’s friends call his relentless pursuit of knowledge “Noah vision.”
“He just grinds,” says former roommate Justice Wenz ’25. “Some people tell you their lofty goals, ‘I want to be an NFL coach.’ You’re like, ‘OK, cool.’ I have no doubt in my mind that Noah will get there.
“He is always connecting with people. He would talk to literally anybody he could,” Wenz continues. “He would be in Twitter groups, and he would talk to graduate assistants or other low-ranking coaches that others would pass up. He would connect, listen to their stories, and see value a lot of other people missed.”
After Kent finished his Wabash coursework in December, he knew he had the skills and passion to start his career as a coach. He just needed the offer. He went home to Florida and packed his entire life in the back of his car.
“I told myself as soon as I got the first job, I was going to go pursue the dream God put on my heart,” he says.
He returned to Wabash to work part-time as an assistant coach while continuing to make connections, send out resumes, and interview for positions. After one particular interview at a small Christian school that “went really well,” Kent felt confused.
“I was pretty confident I was going to get the job, but I got in the car, and as I was praying, I felt like God said, ‘No.’ But it felt like everything else made sense,” he says. “It’s a great program at Christian school and has a great staff. I didn’t know why God was saying no. I felt like he made it abundantly clear on that drive home, ‘There is more.’ He put on my heart to ‘Go in faith and confident hope that I will move.’”
Kent called his brother, Josiah, to help him gain clarity.
“‘What do you want? What are your goals?’” Kent recalls his brother asking. “I told him I wanted an opportunity to get into Division I. Josiah said, ‘What's stopping you from trying? Go volunteer somewhere.’”
Kent had grown up enamored with the University of Iowa’s football program so, he reached out to a coach there that he had met at a conference. Days went by with no response. Wenz reminded Kent of God’s call for confident hope.
“He kept talking about how he was waiting on a response from this guy,” Wenz says. “I told him, ‘Just go to Iowa. I believe in you. The worst that could happen is they tell you no, but you make a lasting impression on the head coach.’”
The next morning, Kent loaded his belongings and drove to Iowa City.
“I was so nervous about it. It seemed like the craziest thing to do—pack up my life and go to Iowa City hoping I could just get a foot in the door.”
With still no response from the coach three days later, at 6 a.m. he sat outside the football facility waiting. He reached out to another coach and another until he finally got a response and a meeting at a nearby coffee shop.
That coach relayed that, while volunteer coaching was not an option at University of Iowa, he’d make a few calls to other schools in the area to see about possibilities. Again, Kent waited.
Several hours passed. Still sitting in the coffee shop in Iowa City, Kent received a text from McCormick as SDSU. He had heard through the grapevine that Kent was in the area.
South Dakota State just had a position come open. Would Kent be interested?
That afternoon he had three phone calls with various SDSU coaches. He woke up at 4 a.m. the next morning, drove to Brookings, South Dakota, and had mid-afternoon meetings and introductions with support staff. Then, 10 minutes into his conversation with the head football coach of the South Dakota State Jackrabbits, Kent had a job.
“The coach said, ‘Since your life is in the back of your car, want to get started right now?’” Kent recalls. “I got up, shook his hand, he walked me straight into a defensive staff meeting, and I hit the ground running.”
A few months into “a whirlwind of learning a lot of football,” Kent feels like he is exactly where God wants him.
“I was with one of our coaches on staff and had a pretty awesome realization. I said, ‘We get to coach football every day. We just do football, that’s it,’” Kent says. “I love what I do and wouldn’t trade it for anything.”
As he reflects back to the path from Tampa to Brookings through Wabash College, Kent realizes that even in high school God was planting coaching seeds in him.
“When I was injured, I was coaching—I didn’t even think about it being coaching but I’d hold an iPad on the sideline and walk the guys through plays, train them during practice,” Kent says. “I went to a small school. I thought I was just helping the team. In hindsight, all those moments prepared me for what I’m doing now.
“Going to Wabash was a step of faith for me, but look at what God did. I figured out what I’m called to do for the rest of my life: develop young men into great husbands, fathers, and community leaders. I’ve met people who have changed my life. Even in the moments of discouragement in my football career, God showed up, put people in front of me, and put me in rooms I should have never been in. I never imagined this is what would happen by me saying yes to God.”