On Monday morning, Shaun Lally told The Statesman that he decided to resign as head coach of the Stony Brook wrestling club. He will be leaving the university to take over as head coach of the wrestling program at Muhlenberg College in Allentown, Pa.

Lally has served as head coach of Stony Brook’s wrestling program for the past two seasons and has played a significant role in running the club. Last Tuesday, he was offered the position at Muhlenberg College. Lally accepted the offer on Thursday.

Muhlenberg will give Lally a chance to coach an NCAA Division III team. It will also give him the chance to be in an area where he is well-known from his wrestling days.

“I wrestled in high school in that area, and was a local standout over there,” Lally said.

As of right now, there is no successor set to take over Lally’s position at Stony Brook. Lally believes that the club will be able to take their time in hiring a new head coach because there is such a good foundation currently in place.

“I don’t think there’s a big rush right now (to hire a new head coach), because we’ve built the program up so that the support system is really great. The E-Board really runs most of the program, and they’re just gonna step up and take on more ownership of the program. Our assistant coaches are the ones who are training the kids. They’re gonna continue to do that, and are not going anywhere,” Lally explained.

Alex Blank currently serves as the team’s head assistant coach and likely will be asked to take on a large portion of the team’s coaching responsibilities.

Despite the fact that Lally has chosen to move on from Stony Brook, he is still very proud of what he was able to accomplish during his time with the Seawolves.

“We did some great things,” Lally said. “We got a bunch of guys down to the national tournament, had five academic All-Americans, won a Best of Brand award and wrestled at Grapple at the Garden.  I was sad to leave though, because we were going to do great things this year.”

Even though Lally will not get a chance to do those great things he envisioned with his team at Stony Brook, he still sees a bright future for the program.

“I think the future is gonna be great,” Lally said. “Now you have kids coming out of high school and working their tail off to get to Stony Brook University, not only because they want a great education, but also because they want an opportunity to wrestle and be local. In the past that opportunity was never there. But, now it’s something that’s real and tangible.”

The Stony Brook wrestling club will begin their 2014-2015 season on Nov. 2 when it  competes at Hofstra University.