WILMINGTON, N.C. – UNCW has handed the keys to its future to a coach who has already helped change its present.
Head coach Aidan Heaney has promoted assistant Lewis Dunne to Associate Head Coach ahead of the 2026 men’s soccer campaign, a move that underlines both the program’s recent rise and its ambition to push further.
Heaney, preparing for his 26th season in charge in 2026, has seen a lot of coaches come and go. Dunne, who arrived in Wilmington for the 2023 season, has moved quickly to the front of the line.
In just a few years, the Englishman has become a central figure in UNCW’s resurgence, playing a key role in the Seahawks’ first CAA Championship Game appearance in five years in 2024. That run felt like a marker. This promotion confirms it.
Heaney did not hide his belief in his No. 2, praising Dunne as a bright young coach who understands the standards and daily values the program demands. The new title, Heaney said, reflects Dunne’s knowledge, work ethic, passion, and commitment to UNCW men’s soccer.
For Dunne, the step up carries weight. He called the role a responsibility he does not take lightly, stressing how motivated he is to deliver for the Seahawks’ current players and their alumni. The gratitude is clear; so is the drive.
This is not a coach handed a promotion on potential alone. Dunne’s résumé is lined with programs that climbed quickly once he arrived.
Before UNCW, he spent a year at IUPUI as assistant coach and recruiting coordinator, helping spark a genuine turnaround. The Jaguars found their scoring touch with 31 goals and posted their most clean sheets in more than a decade. They finished with their highest Horizon League regular-season placing and reached the Horizon Tournament Championship Game for the first time.
Before that, at Notre Dame (Ohio) College, Dunne helped the Falcons to a 16-8-2 record over two seasons, outscoring opponents 79-31. Those are not marginal gains; those are programs taking a leap.
His coaching story started even more quietly at Lake Erie College in 2017, where he arrived as a graduate assistant. Two years later, he was an assistant coach on a team that had transformed. Lake Erie went from five wins in 2017 to 18 victories in 2019, surged as high as No. 4 in the nation, won the GMAC regular-season title, and booked a spot in the NCAA Division II Tournament. It was the kind of rise that gets noticed in athletic departments.
Dunne’s credibility in the locker room comes not just from his coaching track record but from a decorated playing career. At Urbana University, he earned NSCAA First Team All-American honors as a senior in 2016, along with D2CCA All-Atlantic Region First Team and All-MEC First Team recognition. A year earlier, he had already landed on the D2CCA All-Atlantic Region First Team, the All-MEC Second Team, and the OSCA All-Ohio First Team.
He carried that pedigree into the summer game as well, captaining the Dayton Dutch Lions in the Premier Development League in 2016, then turning out for Cleveland SC in the NPSL in 2018.
Cleveland became another proving ground. In 2019, the club hired him as an assistant coach and promptly won the Rustbelt Conference. The next season, he took over as head coach and pushed Cleveland SC to the 2021 Rustbelt Championship and Midwest Regional Championship, earning Coach of the Year honors along the way.
Off the field, Dunne has matched that ambition academically and professionally. He graduated from Urbana with a bachelor’s degree in sports management and completed a master’s in business administration at Lake Erie in 2019. He also holds UEFA B and USSF B coaching licenses, credentials that place him firmly on a pathway toward the game’s higher levels.
All of that now funnels into one program on the North Carolina coast.
UNCW has backed a coach whose teams tend to climb, whose players tend to score more, concede less, and play deeper into tournaments. The title on Dunne’s door has changed. The expectations, if anything, just got bigger.
