The Springfield Effect

David Wetterich first heard about violent threats in Springfield, Ohio, the day after last week’s Presidential debate. Wetterich is the men’s and women’s golf coach at Wittenberg University, a Division III liberal arts school in the town that is at the center of an ugly situation. Since that day, threats to the town have escalated, causing Wittenberg to hold classes remotely and cancel all athletic events for the week. Wetterich’s men’s team was supposed to travel to New York this week for its biggest tournament, the Flower City Preview, but those plans have been scrapped.

“We’ve been told it’s a fluid situation and that’s what we’re trying to do: Be as fluid as possible,” Wetterich said on Wednesday. “But there’s not much you can do when someone is threatening to shoot up the school, and also they’re saying they have cars rigged to explode on campus. It’s not what you want to hear and doesn’t help us from a recruiting standpoint.” 

After the women’s team returned from a tournament on Monday night, Wetterich was the last in the program to leave campus. His car was parked in an athletic lot, and no one else was around. The isolation and quiet was unnerving and eerie. 

“It’s a looming feeling,” Wetterich says. “As I was turning it on, I thought about the movies where when they start up the car, the car blows up. I thought, if this is it, this is it. I push the start and I’m still here and so is my car. I feel OK overall, but there’s definitely some thoughts. It’s hard to decipher what’s real and not real at this point.” 

Wetterich graduated from Wittenberg in 2014 as a second-team All-American before setting off to play professional golf. He bounced around PGA Tour Canada and various mini tours, and although he had some respectable finishes, he never won. He didn’t believe he was playing up to his potential, and funding was a constant challenge. 

In 2022, Wetterich had the opportunity to return to his alma mater and coach the program he once played for. 

“I definitely have an affinity for the university,” he says. “If I didn’t go to Wittenberg, I wouldn’t be a college golf coach now. Going there gave me the opportunity to chase my dream. When the opportunity came to find a different pathway in golf, they were there. I can’t thank them enough. It opens a lot more avenues.” 

In his first season, Wetterich led the men’s team to the North Coast Athletic Conference title and a 13th-place finish at the national championship. The women’s team improved from the previous year to a third-place finish at the conference championship. Last season, the men’s team finished 15th at the Division III national championship. 

“It keeps me busy, especially with the ladies’ team being more competitive and progressing through the last few years,” Wetterich says. “In the last two years we’ve gotten better, but the workload is starting to equate to what the guys have. The ladies’ team is growing in size and talent level.” 

Wetterich is now an associate in the PGA of America program and still occasionally competes. This year, he advanced through the local stage of U.S. Open qualifying and played his sectional qualifying at the Tigers’ home course, Springfield Country Club. The private club is a longtime host of sectional qualifying and has been one of Wetterich’s favorite courses dating to his days as a student, but when he arrived at Wittenberg, the city had fallen on hard times. 

Wetterich was a freshman in 2010, shortly after the financial crisis of 2008. While college can be a bubble for some students, Wetterich and friends would venture into town to restaurants and watering holes, and the financial hardship of the town was evident. The university is a five-minute walk from the center of downtown, which was in decline. Wittenberg knew there were parts of town to avoid. Since returning as a coach, he has noticed changes – some for the better. 

“They’re not as progressive or modern in technology as Columbus or Cincinnati or Dayton, or a bigger city,” he says. “The 2020 census had the population size around 60,000. I think that was pretty consistent when I was in school. In 2022 when I came back, I had some nostalgic feelings, and I noticed that things had changed. There was a lot more activity downtown. They have a brewery in town. I don’t remember thinking the town had changed a lot from an economic standpoint, but it’s nice to see it has progressed a little bit.”    

There are now summer-long festivals around town and new small businesses and restaurants in the downtown area. An amphitheater park, which didn’t exist when Wetterich was a student, plays host to concerts and festivals. Another unmistakable change is the influx of Creole-speaking Haitians in businesses and around town. 

Haitians first came to Springfield legally in 2017, fleeing a gang war in their home country, and took jobs at produce and manufacturing factories that weren’t being filled by locals. Although they filled jobs and unoccupied neighborhoods, started small businesses and restaurants and brought some of their vibrant Caribbean cuisine with them, the community began feeling strained. Hospitals and clinics were stretched thin. Some 1,500 English-learning children were enrolled in schools, and teachers were overextended. Rents crept up. 

“Most of these people that are moving here are just coming to be safe,” Wetterich says. “The only issue here is most don’t know English. I think that needs to be looked at. It’s nice there is some awareness of it now, because before there was a growing population and nothing to be done about helping the community that’s been here and the community that’s coming here. There hasn’t been much done to help mesh that together.” 

Wetterich says the tensions mostly stayed local, and because few outside of local officials were attempting to bridge the gap between communities, many in Springfield felt neglected. 

Everything in Springfield changed last week when Vice Presidential candidate J.D. Vance claimed that Haitians were stealing and eating dogs and cats. Things escalated a night later when former President Trump made the false claim that Haitians are “eating the dogs. The people that came in. They’re eating the cats. They’re eating the pets of the people who live there.” 

The allegation was debunked by debate host David Muir in real time, and later by Springfield Mayor Rob Rue, a Republican.“There’s a lot of garbage on the internet,” added Republican Governor Mike DeWine, “and, you know, this is a piece of garbage that was simply not true. There’s no evidence of this at all.” 

The following day, Wetterich started hearing about threats to the city. Then he saw police from cities close to Springfield as well as the state police. He didn’t know what to make of it. 

“On Thursday morning, driving through downtown, right before we get to the last block, we see someone who is in a vest that says ‘Police Negotiator,’” Wetterich recalls. “Come to find out City Hall was getting death threats and bomb threats, and that was just the start of everything. Then elementary schools, then high schools that may have Haitian students there, and now Wittenberg.” 

Amid rows of university-owned houses near campus are privately owned houses that are rented to Haitians. That has put Wittenberg in the crosshairs. After new threats on Monday, the university moved all classes to remote learning and canceled all on-campus events through September 22. DeWine said all of the new threats originated in other countries and were hoaxes, but he still called in the state highway patrol to protect schools and campuses around town. The moves left Wetterich’s teams without a place to practice and without a tournament to play this week.

“The guys I have talked to are frustrated for apparent reasons,” he says. “We want to go play and compete. The biggest tournament of the fall for Division III golf is the Fall Preview. We’re not going to that anymore. We want to play in the best fields. That’s how you get ranking points in college golf. It definitely puts us at a disadvantage in a few ways.”

Due to financial constraints, Wittenberg cut five majors and 40 faculty members at the start of the year. The golf program hasn’t been immune to budget cuts, and Wetterich is concerned the situation could hurt the golf program financially. 

“We’ve had a crazy season before all this,” he says. “We’ve all had to do our share in cutting back some. With this [the school lockdown], it’s not going to be easy to recruit either. We were a very storied program. We’ve had a really good tradition here, and we want to keep that going.”

Wetterich could have never imagined his golf program would get swept up in a political vortex, and he says it’s not his place to comment on the politics of the moment. His program’s situation illustrates the interconnectedness of everything, the repercussions of neglecting a town in need of a substantive conversation about its growing population, and that there are unintended consequences to the reckless words of politicians. 

“You’ve got to look at facts,” Wetterich says. “That’s one thing I’ve learned as a college coach: You’ve got to look at facts. We’ve definitely experienced the residual effect, or the ripple effect, of what’s going on in the political world.” 

The Tigers had been qualifying often and gathering data to prepare for this weekend’s tournament, which they are no longer competing in. Every player either returned home or was staying with friends. Wetterich traveled to Cincinnati to meet some players who were practicing there. 

“Even though we can’t compete at this time, we’re still training,” he says. “I told everyone yesterday, the show goes on.”

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