Division III football demands players perform unorthodox roles. At Macalester College this season, Jack Scully ’28 played quarterback and punter. Jude Wallin ’26 moved from quarterback to cornerback. Jay Green ’28 played cornerback, returner and receiver. That flexibility extended to the coaching staff this year — all the way up to the head coach.
For the first time in his 13-year career, Head Coach Phil Nicolaides didn’t coach defense. As a student at Carnegie Mellon University, Nicolaides played linebacker and safety. Post-grad, he coached linebackers and defensive backs at multiple schools before he became Randolph-Macon College’s defensive coordinator. When he became Mac’s head coach, he took on linebackers again — until now.
In the offseason, the team hired Mahlon Slaughter, a linebackers coach who started his career as a graduate assistant at Misericordia University in Dallas, Pa. a couple years ago.
“Coach Slaughter was a player at my previous school, [Northwood University in Midland, Mich.]” defensive coordinator Kyle Artinian wrote in an email to The Mac Weekly. “I never coached him directly, but he was playing linebacker while I was coaching the defensive backs. I ran into him at an annual coaching conference and found out he was getting into coaching. He’s been another great addition and a young coach who is eager to learn and is ready to take on any assignment you give to him.”
On other teams, Slaughter might not have received an interview because he specialized in the same position group as the head coach. Mac is different.
“I don’t like to pigeonhole our [team] and say we need to hire a guy that coaches this or that,” Nicolaides said. “At times, you need to do that. But this cycle, it was more about, let’s just find the best coaches that we can, the guys that are going to pour a lot of love into our players and recruit at a high level.”
So, Slaughter became the Scots’ inside linebackers coach and Zach Johnston, the Scots’ receivers coach, moved to outside linebackers. The two part-time coaches share duties. Nicolaides filled the gap. The shift to receivers coach has allowed Nicolaides to get close with a group of players he didn’t know as well before.
“This year allowed me to get to know him better and on a more personal level,” receiver Christian Jones ’26 wrote in an email to The Mac Weekly. “While Coach Johnston was great … Coach Nic is a full time coach and is at every meeting … This allowed for our position meetings to be focused solely on the receivers rather than meeting with the quarterbacks and the meetings being tailored to both positions.”
The Scots saw this impact on the field, as wide receivers Paxton Boyd ’28 and Kelly Storms ’29 ranked 10th and 13th in the Minnesota Intercollegiate Athletic Conference (MIAC) in receiving yards this season, after no Scot placed higher than 19th last year.
Nicolaides brought his defensive perspective to the offense. When the team went through film each week, he told offensive coordinator Matt Reed which plays were most difficult to defend in each coverage, then took that knowledge to practice.
“He’s very detail-oriented and makes sure we all understand the ‘why’ behind each concept, not just our individual assignments,” Boyd wrote in an email to The Mac Weekly. “He emphasizes knowing how every route fits into the bigger picture — sometimes your job isn’t to get the ball but to create space for your teammates. He does a great job helping us recognize which defenders we’re trying to put in conflict and how to adjust our routes based on coverage.”
Nicolaides altered the Scots’ offensive philosophy, too. The change is evident on fourth down. This year, the Scots went for it on fourth down 37 times, eight more than they did last season and 10 more times than any other MIAC team this season.
“I know that on third-and-medium or third-and-long, when you know a team is more prone to go for it on fourth down, it’s much tougher to defend,” Nicolaides said. “You have two plays instead of just one … As a third down play-caller, it [also] opens things up, because you don’t have to get eight yards on third-and-8 — you can get four and put yourself in a better spot.”
Still, Nicolaides didn’t take over the Scots’ offense. Reed called the plays and relayed them to the players through a group of backup quarterbacks on the sidelines. It’s only between plays that Nicolaides weighed in. He says he didn’t want Reed to feel like he’s always looming.
Macalester athletics demand this sort of leadership. Nicolaides’ team went 3-7 this season and 0-10 last season, and the wins weren’t exactly rolling in before that. If he had thought it appropriate, Athletic Director Donnie Brooks could have given Nicolaides the boot before this fall — but he didn’t.
“I’ve seen the impact of just going and making decisions that are short-sighted, and firing people instead of investing in them and watching them develop,” Brooks said. “There’s no guarantee that the next coach is going to come in and do better. You hire people because you see things in them. If you invest in their growth and development the same way I invest in student growth and development, that outcome could be pretty special.”
This piece is a part of a season-long project covering the Macalester College football program. Read it all at dgraham57.substack.com.
