Dan Lohmann

WVU Baseball was inspiring on the field, but this moment caught my eye as a coach. After a tough loss, #1 prospect Gavin Kelly stopped the room to thank the behind-the-scenes staff. Players then neatly pushed in their chairs & left.
Defeat confirms character. Elite culture.

After 6 seasons, I’ve made the decision to step away from coaching soccer at Trinity.

The best part of coaching soccer and softball was having my family with me along the journey. Getting to coach my kids during high school was a dream come true.

I’m deeply grateful for the memories, the relationships, and the unforgettable years on the field.

so good

John Beilein goes into the WVU Sports Hall of Fame this weekend. His run at WVU was storybook, and the Elite 8 run in 2005 is one of the greatest stretches in Mountaineer history.

This was one of my favorite recruiting videos I ever made for WVU—it quickly became a video people just wanted to watch to relive that incredible team. There was no YouTube at the time, so I'd burn DVDs and hand them out.

As the teams exploded onto the national scene during the Big East and NCAA tournaments, newspapers were still the pulse of the sports world. I wanted to capture that spotlight in the edit. I had Tony Caridi bring me back physical New York newspapers from the Big East run, and tracked down others along the way to weave into the piece.

At the Wake Forest game in Cleveland, LeBron James sat nearby. He was in his early years with the Cavs and knew Mike Gansey from their high school basketball days in the Cleveland area. Mike’s performance that night was legendary. Fittingly, both LeBron and Gansey are now with the 76ers.

On a personal note, Coach Beilein has remained a true friend and mentor in my own coaching journey. He has given me invaluable advice that only a coach who has seen it all can offer—shaping my own philosophy on how to build a genuinely connected team.

Watching the recent run by @WVUBaseball brought all of this right back. It was that same kind of deeply connected team that brought people together in an emotional way and made Mountaineer fans incredibly proud.

Fox Sports put it best: “The 2004-05 Mountaineers were easy to fall in love with and difficult to let go of.”

@JohnBeilein @TonyCaridi @KPittsnogle

The entrance video for the 2007 WVU football season took on a life of its own. Here’s the story behind that production and the original version that debuted on September 1, 2007.

I’ve never seen a higher level of excitement for a season than 2007. The team asked me to create the entrance video following the success of our recruiting videos. There were plenty of ideas on direction, but we ultimately settled on starting with a coal train emerging from the dark.

That train was brought to life by Daniel Pauley, an incredibly talented artist who worked with us at Pikewood Creative. He used high-end software to build and animate the train from scratch—a massive technical feat nearly 20 years ago.

Before it ever hit the stadium, word spread fast. The night before the home opener, the video leaked to YouTube and skyrocketed toward 40,000 views almost overnight, back when YouTube was still in its infancy.

When game day arrived, the atmosphere was electric. We did everything we could to amplify the crowd as the team took the field, even incorporating the band swaying to the music. Throughout the season, I kept it fresh by editing in big plays week by week.

That project ended up opening doors beyond Morgantown—Missouri brought me in shortly after to handle their football and basketball entrance videos, too.