Prep Background Serves AU Football Staff Well
August 27, 2004

Like Ralph Malph, the Fonz and the crew from Happy Days, the Ashland University football coaching staff can’t let go of the high school scene. That’s not a fault for a group that spends a good portion of the year visiting high schools around the state.

OK, it’s been a long time since the AU coaches have worn a letterman’s jacket. But Friday night football still means a lot to them, and not just because it’s a chance to evaluate potential college players. Just as it does for fans around the Buckeye State, the AU staff has a great appreciation of what high school football means in these parts.

“Friday night, that’s special,” said Ashland University offensive coordinator Tom Stacy. “There’s something special about turning on the lights on Friday night. Oh yeah, I miss Friday nights.”

These days, Stacy does his coaching on Saturday. But like the majority of the members of the AU coaching staff, he has an extensive background on the high school level. That’s a rarity today when most college coaches take a familiar route, moving from college player, to graduate assistant college coach and then fulltime assistant college coach.

Receivers coach and recruiting coordinator Greg Gillum spent 12 seasons as high school coach. Stacy coached on that level for 14 years. Head coach Lee Owens went 89-32-11 with a state title in 11 years as a prep boss. Offensive line coach Doug Geiser and defensive coordinator Jim Meyer also have high school coaching experience on their resumes.

Even though this has become the non-traditional route to college coaching, there’s a strong argument to be made that moving up the ranks in this fashion makes a coach a better teacher and communicator. That’s true for every sport. Former NBA coach Chuck Daly, who coached the Cleveland Cavaliers and later the league champion Detroit Pistons, began his career as the head basketball coach at Punxsutawney (PA) High School, sharing headlines with the world’s most famous groundhog.

“We definitely know what they’ve been through, we’ve been in their shoes,” said Gillum, who was a business teacher and baseball and football coach. “I think it gives you instant credibility. It’s easy to build a rapport.”

“I think you have a better perspective of what the high school coach goes through, especially in recruiting,” added Stacy.

Gillum, Stacy and Owens have an association that goes back to the 1980s. At Galion High School in 1985, they won a state championship. The trio was also together at Massillon Washington High School. The Tigers are recognized as one of the top high school programs in the country. That’s where Stacy first got an inkling that the college game might be a good fit for him.

“I never really had an interest in it (college) until Massillon,” explained Stacy, a former physical education teacher, who spent four seasons as the head coach at Shelby. “At Massillon you constantly had college head coaches and assistants coming around, John Cooper, Gary Moeller. That’s where I developed an interest in college football.”

Shortly thereafter, college football developed an interest in Owens, who went from Massillon to Ohio State, where he was an assistant under Cooper. His background on the prep level, in addition to Galion and Massillon, includes stops at Crestview and Waynesfield-Goshen.

“I hired Lee Owens out of high school,” recalled Cooper. “He came in and did a great job for me. He coached a couple of pretty good football players in Korey Stringer and Orlando Pace. Not only that, he did a great job with our entire offensive line. He did a great job of recruiting. When I hired him, I wanted to hire the best high school football coach in Ohio that was available.”

Owens moved on to Akron from Ohio State. He heads a staff that knows what it takes to be among the very best as a college and high school coach.

“When I was a high school coach, I liked the college coaches who were concerned about your program, you’d sit down and talk and it was a give-and-take session,” Gillum said. “The coaching profession is beg, borrow and steal. The thing I didn’t like were the coaches who came in and didn’t ask for your input on whether a player could play for them. They’d come in with a pre-conceived notion. They did everything off of film. They weren’t concerned with the player as a person, just as a football player. That was a red flag to me.”

No such concerns are connected to this staff. Recruiting is the life-blood of college football, but it’s also the part of the game that can wear out coaches. It’s time-consuming and filled with more peaks and valleys than the Appalachian Mountain Range.

“If you don’t enjoy it, then you need to get out,” emphasized Gillum. “The fun part of recruiting is getting to know the players on a personal basis. You like to see what they want in a college. You don’t ask superficial questions, you need to ask probing questions.”

You don’t have to probe for a long time to discover why Gillum liked coaching on the high school level. The philosophy that served him so well at places like Galion, Massillon and Lyndhurst Brush works today at AU.

“Kids have options, there’s more to do than football and football is hard,” said Gillum. “But as a coach you have to come in and show them that football has life-long lessons. Football is hard, you have to sell your sport. But that’s why I wanted to coach.”