Font ResizeHe served as the ninth grade coach at Fairfield High School last season -- and was approved by the Fairfield Area School District school board as the varsity head coach Monday night -- after he resigned as the head football coach at Waynesboro in 2010.
He told his wife, Kathleen, that he wasn't interested in coaching at the time.
"I'm a big believer in if you can't do something right, you shouldn't do it anymore," Seiler said in a phone interview Monday night. "That's what prompted me to resign."
He replaces Mike Quealy, who resigned after going 2-37 in four seasons at Fairfield. Seiler, who coached 17 years at Waynesboro and will continue teaching American history there, has no qualms about his new position.
"We're fully aware of what we're walking into," he said. "In terms of changing things, what we have to do is change expectations and change the culture. We're going to be real sound. We're going to try to infuse an enthusiasm and expectation that we need to take ourselves a little further and stretch things a little harder."
Seiler, who posted a head coaching record of 51-113 in separate stints of 1988-97 and 2003-09 at Waynesboro, expects to have some turnover on his coaching staff. The school board also approved the resignation of former Fairfield assistant coach William Tyler on Monday.
It also approved the hiring of Kellie Macharsky as the next head field hockey coach. She will replace Jackie Suchanek, whose resignation was approved last month.
Several challenges lay before Seiler as he attempts to turn around a football team that has lost 29 consecutive games.
Fairfield Superintendent William Chain said he has spoken with the York Adams Interscholastic Athletic Association about decreasing the number of teams in YAIAA Division III, which would allow the Green Knights to play more similarly-sized schools on would-be open dates. Currently, nine of the division's 10 playing dates are games within the division.
"On any given Friday night, we put younger kids and smaller kids against an opponent that quite often has more experience and more physical weight," he said. "I'm concerned over this. I've campaigned with the York-Adams league to try and find flexibility in the schedule for our young people to have some more open days to be able to play schools that are more like us (in size)."
Another trouble could be financial. He said the school board needed to look at its spending with the budget in the shape that it currently is, but added football was safe from being eliminated.
"I'm not in any way making a recommendation to eliminate football with a stroke of a pen," Chain said. "But I do think it's time for an administrator, somebody like me, to kind of level with parents and those stakeholders in football and talk about those tough issues and make sure we're doing the right thing for these young people. It's a discussion, honestly, we need to have and the school should look forward to having."
Seiler said finances were discussed throughout the hiring process.
"That was part of the discussion, not in terms of specifics," he said. "All schools are facing budget decisions at this point in time. Any time you have a program that hasn't been, in the won-loss record, hasn't been successful, there's always been some question. We all know football's relatively expensive. But if I worried about that, I'm not paying attention to the things I should pay attention."
An assistant on Quealy's staff who had been under Seiler, Steve Thomson, coaxed Seiler into coaching the ninth-graders last season. He talked with his wife about returning to coach, and she suggested he should.
"They were just a wonderful group of kids to work with," Seiler said. "You get used to the kids and appreciate their efforts and want to give back. I'm extremely excited, extremely thankful for the opportunity."
Seiler's hiring, coming after South Western named Damian Poalucci as its new football head coach last week, leaves two Hanover area schools -- Hanover and New Oxford -- with head coaching vacancies.
