Bishop Dwenger hires Will Lewis, seeks stability for girls basketball program

Bishop Dwenger turned to a familiar name in northeast Indiana, naming Will Lewis its next girls basketball coach and giving the Saints a coach who already knows the building, the school and the Fort Wayne coaching network.

Lewis arrived from Eastside, where he coached the boys team in 2024-25 and finished 1-22 in his lone season as head coach. He also previously worked at Bishop Dwenger as a JV coach and at North Side as an assistant, a path that gives him a base of relationships inside a program that has spent too much time searching for a steady voice.

The hire matters as much for what it says about urgency as it does for familiarity. Lewis becomes the fourth different head girls basketball coach at Bishop Dwenger in four seasons, a level of turnover that can slow offseason development, scramble roster continuity and make it harder for younger players to trust a long-term plan. The Saints have been trying to settle the position ever since Kirk Comer was hired in May 2024 after Steve Wiktorowski’s five-season run ended at 47-74. Comer had been one of the area’s more established winners, going 144-49 in eight seasons at Jay County, but he lasted only one season before Kyle Bond took over in July 2025 and later left for the Northrop girls job.

Lewis also brings a role that keeps him around the school every day. Bishop Dwenger lists him as dean of students, another sign that the hire leans heavily into institutional familiarity. In a city where coaching movement can reshape rosters quickly, that kind of day-to-day presence can matter just as much as a resume line.

The bigger challenge is the one that has hung over the program for years. Outside reporting says Bishop Dwenger has not won a sectional since 1999, even though the program owns nine sectional championships, five of them in the 1990s. Its last winning season came in 2018-19. That history gives the Saints a proud standard, but it also explains why the school is betting on a coach who already understands the terrain.

Lewis now inherits a program that wants more than a clean reset. Bishop Dwenger needs continuity, and it needs it fast if the Saints are going to turn local ties into sectional-level results again.