Matt Cloud is no longer the head baseball coach at Friends University, Athletic Director Joe Zimmerman said.

Due to confidentiality and University policy, he is not at liberty to discuss the issue further or the situation surrounding why Cloud is no longer head coach, he said.

However, he has named assistant coach Derek Leppert as interim head coach. Leppert will manage the team through the spring and Zimmerman does not have a time table as to when he will hire a new head coach.

Cloud was reached by e-mail and wrote, “I have no comment at this time,” referring questions to Zimmerman.

The Chronicle reported last fall that Cloud was hired as head coach on Dec. 1, 2006. Mark Carvalho, who was the coach before Cloud, was fired in October 2006.

Cloud was the former head coach at Bacone College in Muskogee, Okla. Before coming to Friends, Cloud was the head baseball coach for Iowa Wesleyan College. He brought six recruits from Iowa Wesleyan to Friends, the <i>Chronicle</i> reported.

Junior Wes Defoor said it is those players who took the news hardest, but that a lot of the current players are upset because it has been the second year in a row they have had to deal with losing a coach.

Defoor has played for Friends for three years, making Leppert the third coach he will have played for.

At a team meeting before Thanksgiving break, the team was told that Cloud was taking a personal leave, Defoor said. But they could be told nothing else due to privacy, among other reasons.

But when Defoor came to a team meeting on Monday, his coach was absent.

“I wasn’t really expecting it,” he said of the news.

He said the team was never told why their coach is no longer with the program.

“We don’t know anything,” Defoor said.

“He (Joe Zimmerman) told us absolutely nothing.”

Defoor thinks a few players may leave at semester, but the fact that most will stay is encouraging to him because they will have a pretty good team this year.

“I think (Cloud) was a good coach,” Defoor said, describing him as organized and knowledgeable about what he wanted from the players and where he wanted them to go.

“I respected him a lot.”

Although Defoor didn’t know Cloud as a person outside the baseball team, he said many players did and liked him. So those players are taking it hard that he is gone, he said.