Wilfrid Laurier University has signed head coach Michael Faulds to a five-year contract extension through the 2030 U Sports football season.
“I give a lot of credit to our athletic director, Kate McCrae Bristol. She’s been our athletic director now for a few years and she realized what a great season we’ve had,” Faulds told 3DownNation.
The 41-year-old from Eden Mills, ON native has been with the Golden Hawks since 2013. He led WLU to the program’s first undefeated regular season in 2024, winning the Yates Cup and losing to Laval University 22-17 in the 59th Vanier Cup. Faulds has been head coach for 11 seasons at WLU, producing a 63-41 overall record, 53-33 in the regular season.
“She also realized, I’m coming to the end of another contract, she wanted to make sure that I wanted to call Laurier home, that I was quite comfortable, not getting to the end of a contract and having questions,” Faulds said.
Those questions are usually about Faulds going to Western University, where he played quarterback from 2005 to 2009 and won two Yates Cups, and replacing Greg Marshall if he ever retires. This long-term extension answers that speculation and should help Laurier recruiting student-athletes.
“I think a lot of other teams are probably telling recruits: ‘How long is coach Faulds going to be there? Is coach Marshall going to retire? His roots are at Western.’ I tell recruits I love my time at Western, I love coach Marshall, he’s a mentor, but I’ve been here two-and-a-half times as long as I was ever in London, Ontario. I truly have all of this purple in my wardrobe,” Faulds said.
“We really have stability within our coaching ranks. Not just myself, offensive coordinator Todd Galloway, defensive coordinator Ron VanMoerkerke. You see it with the CFL and the NFL, there is a lot of turnover in coaching. When a kid can commit to you, they are going to have the same coordinators, the same positional coaches, and ultimately the same head coach in their time, that’s special.”
Faulds and his family moved to the Kitchener-Waterloo area when he was 29-years-old and have called the area home ever since. That’s helped him build a consistently competitive Golden Hawks football team. Wilfrid Laurier won the Yates Cup, Ontario University Athletics championship, in 2016 and 2024 under Faulds while he won Coach of the Year awards in both those seasons.
Tuffy Knight is the only head coach who has spent more seasons leading the Golden Hawks at 19. Faulds sits seven wins away from passing Gary Jeffries for second-most in program history with 69. It seems reasonable Faulds could rank No. 1 in Laurier history for many, if not all, head coach records.
“I always tell our guys the secret to success is knowing there is no secret. It’s not what you’re going to put in your body, it’s not what you’re going to do, it’s how you work every single day and how hard you do work. For me, it is about the people. The culture we have here at Laurier Football is very strong,” Faulds said.
“Regardless of not having beautiful facilities for most of our time here, and a lot of that is going to change, we’ve been able to outwork a lot of teams. We’ve had consistency within our coaching ranks that has allowed us to really punch above our weight class and to have the success we are having now.”
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