OSHKOSH — After announcing in February that they were reviving the men's soccer program, which was discontinued in 2015, UW-Oshkosh officially introduced their new head coach, Darren Gallagher, who will lead the team when they return to the pitch in the fall of 2027.
“As my wife said, she said, we're not doing this just to be a club team version. We want to win a national championship,” said Gallagher.
Darren and his wife Kristen both played for the Titans in the early 2000s. He made the team on a two-day tryout his freshman year. Playing under legendary coach Toby Bares, Gallagher helped the Titans achieve significant success, making it all the way to the D3 national semifinals in 2003.
“He's not maybe the guy you'd necessarily bet on, but probably in his mind, he was certain he was going to be there at some point,” the UW-Oshkosh Hall of Famer Bares said. “I'm certainly glad he was because he was a significant part of that team that he just reflected all the, the passion and the commitment and the ability to be successful.”
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“For me, yeah, I would just say, you know, it is full circle, but maybe even more full circle it's from being in a room like this and my father being here and other families when the program was being taken away and then to see everybody back in here to celebrate it when it's brought back,” said Gallagher.
Bares served on the search committee for the new Titans head coach. While it wasn't a guarantee that Gallagher—who was the head coach at D3 Mount St. Joseph University—would land the role, Bares called him 'the total package.’
“I actually was down at his previous site, Mount Saint Joseph's in Cincinnati for a couple days, and I was able to witness how he was as a head coach in his first year there, and I was just so impressed with what he was doing there in his first year,” said Bares. “I think for the university, I'm very happy they chose him because I think he can really put a program together that the community and the university is going to be very proud of.”
For Gallagher, he’s excited to be the one responsible for reviving a Titans program that means so much to him. He thinks they can be competitive from day 1.
“From here it's just building from scratch, which then I get to decide the people that I want to build around,” Gallagher said. “And then for any players that are coming in in '27, you have a rare opportunity on the men's side to not only be competitive right away in what I call the Big 10 of D3 is basically what we are in the WIAC, but to say you get to play right away and things with the transfer portal and all of that, I think the realistic side of it is to be competitive from day one.”
