After 22 seasons at the helm of the UW-Stevens Point football program, head coach John Miech has proved himself and his program as one of the premier in the Wisconsin Intercollegiate Athletic Conference (WIAC).
Coach Miech boasts a 145-75-2 overall record, ranking him fourth on the all-time WIAC wins list. He is also the school’s all-time winningest coach, with almost twice as many victories as any other football coach in school history.
Having completed his 28th year as a coach at UWSP, Miech has posted 24 seasons with a .500 or better record during the last 27 years. He has also won four WIAC championships and earned Coach of the Year accolades three times (1998, 2001 & 2008). Miech led the Pointers to a 7-3 record in 2009 and a second place finish in the WIAC.
Miech’s association with Pointer football actually goes back to 1972 when he first joined the program as an offensive lineman, providing protection for the nation’s top passing offense in both 1973 and 1974.
Along the way, he has developed numerous players who went on to play in the NFL, CFL, AFL and European leagues. Most notable among those players is Clint Kriewaldt, who was drafted in the sixth round by the Detroit Lions in 1999 and played in the 2006 Super Bowl as a member of the world champion Pittsburgh Steelers. Others include Barry Rose, who had stints with both the Buffalo Bills and Denver Broncos, Kirk Baumgartner, a draft choice of the Green Bay Packers and Pete Lucas, a draft pick of the Atlanta Falcons.
In 1975, following graduation with a degree in Physical Education, Miech began his coaching career with a three-year stint as an assistant with the Pointers before moving on to Stephen F. Austin State University. There, he served as a graduate assistant for the Lumberjacks while working on his Master’s Degree, which he received in 1979.
Miech returned to Wisconsin in 1979 and served as the head coach at Whitnall High School and then Jefferson High School for three seasons each before returning to UW-Stevens Point in 1985 as the defensive coordinator. As defensive coordinator with the Pointers, his unit allowed just over 275 yards per game and four yards per play in three seasons to lead the conference.
A 2005 inductee into the Wisconsin Football Coaches Association Hall of Fame, Miech and his wife, Sheila, who serves as the head coach of the highly-successful Pointer women’s soccer program, have two sons, Jesse and Ryan.
