SOUTHFIELD—A Hall of Fame Michigan high school football coach has been named the new head football coach at Lawrence Technological University.
Scott Merchant was inducted into the Michigan High School Football Coaches Association Hall of Fame in 2022 after 30 years as a high school and college coach.
A Detroit-area native, Merchant began his coaching career at Albion College, where he was an assistant from 1993 to 1997, a period that included Albion's Division III national football championship in 1994. He then served as head football coach at the University of Detroit Jesuit High School from 1998 to 2006, an assistant coach at Brother Rice High School, in 2007 and 2008, and head coach at Chippewa Valley High School from 2009 to 2023. Over the course of his high school coaching career, Merchant was named a regional coach of the year six times by the Michigan High School Football Coaches Association and the Division 1 Coach of the Year in 2018.
During his tenure at Chippewa Valley, Merchant's teams won three MAC Red championships, four district championships, one regional championship, the 2018 Division 1 state football championship, and compiled an overall record of 104-53. Merchant's Chippewa Valley teams also earned academic all-state accolades, the Steve Spicer Award for community service, and raised thousands of dollars for the Wounded Warrior Project and the Van Andel Institute towards cancer research.
"My family and I are excited and blessed to be offered this opportunity to help develop a top-notch football program at a nationally recognized technological university," Merchant said. "Our mission as a program will be to recruit, retain, develop, and graduate high quality student athletes, who will make a positive contribution to our campus and community, on and off the field. Through hard work, determination, theory, and practice, our players will learn essential life skills and develop relationships that they will take with them and use well after graduation."
LTU Director of Football Operations Lou Bitonti added: "We believe Scott will be a fine leader for the young men in our football program. And the coaching staff he is putting together are people who have coached at a high level and are educators in their own right, who will teach our players what it takes to be great students, great athletes, and great representatives of Lawrence Tech, both on and off the field."
LTU reintroduced football as an intercollegiate sport in 2017 after a 60-plus-year absence. The Blue Devils play in the Mid-States Football Association, a conference affiliated with the National Association of Intercollegiate Athletics (NAIA). Home games are played at the 2,200-seat Blue Devils Stadium at the intersection of Ten Mile Road and the Lodge Freeway on LTU's Southfield campus.
Merchant is married and the father of two children.
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Lawrence Technological University is one of only 13 private, technological, comprehensive doctoral universities in the United States. Located in Southfield, Mich., LTU was founded in 1932 and offers more than 100 programs through its Colleges of Architecture and Design, Arts and Sciences, Business and Information Technology, Engineering, and Health Sciences, as well as Specs@LTU as part of its growing Center for Professional Development. PayScale lists Lawrence Tech among the nation's top 11 percent of universities for alumni salaries. Forbes and The Wall Street Journal rank LTU among the nation's top 10 percent. U.S. News and World Report list it in the top tier of the best Midwest colleges. Students benefit from small class sizes and a real-world, hands-on, "theory and practice" education with an emphasis on leadership. Activities on Lawrence Tech's 107-acre campus include more than 60 student organizations and NAIA varsity sports.
