A longtime high school head coach and collegiate assistant on the West Coast, Neil Fendall was tapped to become Southern Oregon University's defensive coordinator in the spring of 2022.
Fendall arrived at SOU after serving as the head coach at Bend's Caldera High School last year and at Sisters High from 2015-21. Prior to those stints, he was a secondary coach at Cal Poly for three years and at Linfield for six. He has Rogue Valley ties, too, having been an assistant coach at Grants Pass from 1999-2006.
Fendall earned a master's of arts in teaching from Concordia University in 1998 and a bachelor's degree from Portland State University a year earlier. He was a safety for the PSU football team, serving as a team captain and playing on three NCAA playoff teams.
He is a product of Milwaukie High School, which is also where his coaching career began in an assistant role from 1997-99.