Kent Anderson is the new head coach of the Iowa Wesleyan College football program. The 47-year-old Anderson is the 45th head coach in the 120-year history of Iowa Wesleyan's football program.

Anderson takes over for Jason Smelser as Head Football Coach and comes to IWC with a unique background, having spent the past 15 years as a head coach in Germany. As a coach in the German Football League professional ranks, Anderson posted a 182-62-5 record and won eight national championships. He won titles with four different teams and was a six-time national coach of the year.

Though he spent many years coaching in Germany, Anderson is hardly a stranger to southern Iowa. He is a native of Bloomfield, Iowa, and a graduate of Davis County High School, where he was all-state in football and basketball as well as a state champion in track & field. The son of Dennis and Barbara Anderson, he comes from a family with a background in coaching and administration. His father Dennis is well-known throughout Iowa as a long-time head coach and athletic director at Davis County High.

Anderson is also a 1985 graduate of Iowa State University, where he received a degree in general studies and was a wide receiver and special teams player and a three-year letter winner on the football team.

Upon his graduation from Iowa State, Anderson worked in the private sector for six years in sales. He then spent two years at the University of North Carolina working as a graduate assistant in the football program coached by Mack Brown, who is now the head coach at the University of Texas. Anderson coached wide receivers and the offensive line and was part of a UNC team that won the 1993 Peach Bowl, the Tar Heels' first bowl win in nine years.

Anderson also spent one year as an assistant coach at Simpson College in Indianola, Iowa, coaching wide receivers and coordinating the team's passing game. In 1994 he took over as head coach of the Braunschweig Lions in Braunschweig, Germany, and became the first coach in GFL history to take his team to the playoffs in his first year as coach.

While coaching in Germany, Anderson also oversaw many of his teams' football operations, including recruitment/scouting of players from the NCAA, NFL and Europe, developing corporate sponsorship and marketing programs, budget operation and personnel decisions. Outside of football he also developed skills as a motivational speaker for a number of high-profile businesses in Germany.

Anderson is married to Friederike, an elementary school teacher. The couple now resides in Mount Pleasant.