Former Wells College Men’s Basketball Pair Promoted in Collegiate Coaching Ranks

A pair of former men's basketball players have been promoted in the collegiate coaching ranks. Alington Paul and Erich Kaempffe have found new homes for the upcoming 2021-22 season. Paul has been named assistant men's basketball coach at Division I Yale University, while Kaempffe has been named head men's basketball coach at Division III Alfred University.

Paul played two seasons (2012-14) and Kaempffe four seasons (2011-15) for the Express and were teammates during the 2012-13 and 2013-14 seasons. The duo helped Wells to the North Eastern Athletic Conference Championship game in 2013 and were both named NEAC scholar athletes during the 2013-14 season as the team's highest percentage 3-point shooters.

Paul went on as a graduate assistant at Castleton University, where he earned his master's degree in athletic leadership in 2016 after leaving Wells in 2014 with a bachelor's degree in business administration. After a two-year stint as an assistant coach at Putnam Science Academy, Paul spent the next three years at Boston University as an assistant coach before joining Yale.

Kaempffe also moved on from Wells as a graduate assistant, but at Ithaca College, where he earned his master's degree in sport and exercise science and sport psychology in 2016 after leaving Wells in 2015 with a bachelor's degree in business and entrepreneurship with honors. After a season as an assistant coach at SUNY Oswego, Kaempffe spent the next four seasons at Rensselaer Polytechnic Institute as an assistant coach before joining Alfred.

Paul's name surfaced last summer when Wells College's men's basketball coach Joe Wojtylko selected the program's all-decade team with Paul being one of its members. Paul received one all-conference selection and was the team's most valuable player in 2013-14. He finished with 505 points, 203 rebounds, 58 assists and 37 steals and is remembered most by Wojtylko as a player who made the post season in all four years of collegiate basketball and as a player who took more charges in a single season than any other Wells player in program history.

Kaempffe was a two-time captain who still holds the single season program record for 3-point percentage at .476. He also won the Wells men's basketball program's Lesley Mead Express Award twice. A three-time NEAC scholar athlete, who also played golf at Wells, Kaempffe earned the golf team's rookie of the year award in 2011-12. A member of the Student-Athlete Advisory Committee, he was inducted into Phi Beta Kappa before graduating summa cum laude. He finished with 157 points, 92 assists, 70 rebounds and 29 steals and is remembered most by Wojtylko as a coach on the floor with tremendous leadership and as an example of what every coach hopes for in a student-athlete by excelling in the classroom, the court and on the campus. 

In 2020, Kaempffe was one of only two Division III assistant coaches to be named to the National Association of Basketball Coaches Under Armour 30-Under-30 list, which honors the top 30 outstanding college coaches in the country under the age of 30.