Rich Seils was a four-year letter winner in football and a two-year letter winner in men’s lacrosse from 1963 to 1967. In addition to his accolades on the playing field at Denison, Seils has enjoyed a long and successful career in coaching and athletics administration. In recognition of an outstanding career devoted to the development of young people through sports, Seils has been selected as this year’s recipient of the Varsity D Association Citation.
As a player at Denison, Seils was a first-team All-Ohio Athletic Conference selection as a center in 1966. He was a team captain that season and also was voted the team’s Most Valuable Player. From 1963 to 1966, Seils played on some of Head Coach Keith Piper’s most successful teams, going 8-1 in 1963 and 8-1 again in 1966. In all, Seils’ teams compiled a 28-8 record on the gridiron.
In two years as a member of the lacrosse team, Seils helped the Big Red go 21-1 during that span, highlighted by a 12-0 senior season in 1967.
After Denison, Seils spent 10 years as the head football coach at Otterbein College, guiding the Cardinals to a 49-40-2 record from 1975 to 1984. That spawned a 20-year stint as the athletic director at Thomas Worthington High School in suburban Columbus. Seils earned his master’s degree from Ohio University in 1969 and his Ph.D. from Ohio State in 1985. He is a member of the Ohio High School Athletic Directors’ Hall of Fame and the Ohio Capital Conference Hall of Fame. Since 2006, Seils has served as the president of Denison’s Varsity D Association. His late father, LeRoy G. Seils, was a 1942 graduate of Denison and had an enduring and venerable career as Denison’s director of athletics. Rich’s sister, Lyn Seils Robertson ’70, also is a Denison grad and is a professor emerita in the college’s Department of Education after retiring in 2013 following a long and distinguished career as a Denison teacher and administrator.
