3 finalists for Northern football coach

Three candidates for the head football coach position at Montana State University-Northern have been named and will be interviewed next week.

Ryan Gatch, Kelly Bills and Aaron Christensen are the finalists out of 62 applicants for the position.

Gatch will be interviewed Monday, Bills Wednesday and Christensen Thursday. All interviews will be 4:30 p.m. in the Hensler Auditorium in the Applied Technology Center and will be open forums. Students, faculty and community members are invited to attend the interviews.

Gatch is the head coach and physical education instructor for Deadwood High School in Lead, South Dakota, and has worked at numerous colleges in the last 14 years, including MSU-Northern. He has a master’s in education, health, physical education and recreation from Chadron State College in Chadron, Nebraska, and a bachelor’s degree in education, physical education with a minor in geography and coaching from Dickinson State University in Dickinson, North Dakota.

Bills is the offensive coordinator and quarterback coach at Willamette University in Salem, Oregon. He was an offensive graduate assistant at Brigham Young University in Salt Lake City from 2008 to 2012 and has a bachelor’s degree from that university.

Christensen is the offensive coordinator and recruiting coordinator at Missouri Valley College in Marshall, Missouri. He has coached at the NAIA level for over 10 seasons and has been a part of four consecutive HAAC championships and four NAIA playoff appearances over the past four seasons, according to a press release from MSU-Northern. He has a master’s in management from Lindenwood University in St. Charles, Missouri, and a bachelor’s degree in management from Si Tanka Huron University in Huron, South Dakota.

Once the interviews are complete, MSU-Northern Interim Chancellor Greg Kegel and Athletic Director Christian Oberquell will decide who will get the job.

No date has been set for when they will make the decision, according to the press release.