Tomsula learned to connect with players at tiny Catawba
Aug 23, 2015 at 7:51 AM
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[...] when Jim Tomsula was on the coaching staff, he made sure his players had a training table and an academic tutoring center.Of sorts.The training table was a loaf of bread, a bunch of bananas, and jars of peanut butter and jelly that Tomsula would bring to the field to feed his players.Universal lessonsTiny Catawba College, enrollment 1,300, is certainly not USC or Notre Dame.Nor is it a traditional launching pad for a head-coaching career in the NFL.The 49ers promoted Tomsula, who never spent a season as anything more than a position coach, in large part to heal a culture the bosses had decided was broken.While Tomsula's mastery of the technical side of the job is unknown, his credentials as a motivator and mentor are strong.[...] that path began at Catawba.The school was founded in 1851 in Salisbury, a sleepy southern town most famous for being the site of a prisoner-of-war camp during the Civil War.The football team plays in the South Atlantic Conference, against opponents like Lenoir-Rhyne, Tusculum and Mars Hill.The little school is the incubator for Tomsula's career, first as a player and then as a coach.[...] he met his future wife, Julie, who was in the school's sports...
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