GoChiefs
LOGAN — When applied to the Logan High School football program, the old expression “the more things change, the more they stay the same” makes perfect sense these days.
Kelly Wolfe was hired Monday night by the Logan-Hocking Local Board of Education as the 28th head football coach of the Chieftains since 1912.
Wolfe’s hiring had the blessing of Ron Janey, LHS activities director — who made the formal recommendation to the board — and former head coach Dale Amyx, who stepped down two weeks ago after 20 seasons as head coach and 30 with the Logan football program.
And while the new head coach has already gotten started, he readily admits everything that’s happened to this point has been a mind-boggling whirlwind.
“It’s something I’ve wanted to for a long time, but it’s actually kind of surreal,” he said late last week. “To be perfectly honest, it hasn’t sunk in at all.”
He becomes the first LHS graduate — not to mention the school’s first former football player — to become head coach of one of the most storied prep football programs in Ohio. He finds it hard to believe that none of his 27 predecessors were actual LHS alumni.
“It is an unbelievable thought,” Wolfe admitted. “I told the guys the other night I’m very, very excited to be in this position. I’m proud and I’m honored to be in this position right now. I hope I can do what needs to get done. We have quite a tradition going right now and I think everybody’s excited.
“I just don’t want to screw it up!” he exclaimed with a laugh.
He’s paid his dues as an assistant coach for the past 19 years. A 1987 LHS graduate, he joined the Chieftain coaching staff in 1991 shortly after graduating from Ohio Wesleyan University.
After serving in various coaching capacities, Wolfe became offensive coordinator starting with the 2007 season when longtime OC Jim Robinson left to become LHS principal.
Some things will indeed stay the same under Wolfe, and some things will change as well.
“We had some good success when I played (a pair of 9-1 seasons), and many people don’t realize that I’ve been with Dale (as head coach) every year except for one (1990), so all the success we’ve had under Dale I’ve been along for that ride too. I also played when Dale was an assistant coach.
“(Change) will be one of the big things,” he added. “Dale and I are different people. Obviously I would be an idiot if I came in and changed a lot of things. We have a good system going.”
Several of the changes will be simply in the differences between the way Amyx ran things and the way Wolfe will run the program. Amyx’s recent advice to Wolfe was for him to be himself and do things his way, not necessarily the way Amyx did.
The program isn’t broke and doesn’t need fixing… it’s just that there’s a new man in charge.
“Some of the day-to-day things are probably going to change, and obviously I’ll want to do some things differently than Dale,” Wolfe said. “I do want to put my stamp on some things — and I hope people realize that. Not every little single detail has to be the same as what Dale would do. Change isn’t always a bad thing, though.”
One thing that definitely will not change: Wolfe will continue to call the offensive plays.
“I’m not done calling plays yet… I waited too long to do that, and I haven’t got my fill of that yet,” he said with a laugh. “I’ll still call the plays.”
Amyx, however, was the defensive coordinator. Longtime assistant and LHS graduate Pat Walsh will take over the defense; Jim Huntsberger, who coached the freshman team since the early 1990s, joins the varsity staff to take Walsh’s place as special teams coordinator, and Greg Jones returns to the varsity as well.
“As a staff, we sat down and talked to see if anybody wanted to move up or whatever,” Wolfe revealed. “Greg wanted to come back to the varsity and Jim said he would like the chance to come up to the varsity. Pat is going to be the defensive coordinator, Jim will be special teams coach, and Steve Harris will be our strength and conditioning coach.”
Bob Cassady, who has been with the football staff for several years as well, is retiring, meaning there were two openings on the varsity staff to fill. Tim Woodgeard, who assisted Huntsberger with the freshman team, will be the head coach for the ninth graders, assisted by Brian Breining.
And Wolfe, like Amyx before, can’t say enough good things about his staff.
“That’s something else I’ve been very humbled by in this whole thing: all the other coaches came to me and said they thought I deserved the chance to (be head coach),” Wolfe said. “We had a meeting the other night and every football coach in the system still wants to be a part of the program. That was nice to hear that they supported me, and that was quite humbling in itself for all of those guys to come in and say that. I tremendously appreciated that.
“Every position has been filled all the way down through junior high,” he added. “We don’t have to go outside the (school) system to look for coaches.”
Also being taken into consideration is keeping a good balance between the program and other facets of life.
For example, the season has gotten longer with the added emphasis being placed on early-summer 7-on-7 passing scrimmages… something Amyx worried about when it came to burning out both the coaches and the kids.
“That has become an issue,” Wolfe admitted. “The thing I need to look at… for the most part, as coaches we all have some fairly young families at home.”
Wolfe and his wife, Sheila, have two children: 12-year-old Jordan and six-year-old Danielle; Walsh has three young boys; Jones a young son and daughter, and Huntsberger a daughter in middle school.
“Being with our families is an important thing to me, and the burnout issue is something we are going to have to address,” Wolfe said. “I think, to be perfectly honest, we’re still going to do some 7-on-7s, but I don’t know if we’ll do as many as in years past. (We don’t want to) overdo it. We might cut back some in June; that’s a busy time for a lot of people.
“Coaches try to take their vacations in June, and if you’re running around all the time, and have football every weekend, that makes it rough for everybody, and I don’t want to do that,” he added. “Time is an issue. I have some good people who want to work with me and I have to be willing to make some changes. We’ll get the same work done, but we’ll just do it differently.”
He acknowledges the work and time involved in preparing for the primary revenue-generating sports of football and basketball is big, and it’s also an issue.
“The animal is huge. High school sports now, (especially) high school football and basketball, have become so big,” he said. “I know basketball has a lot of stuff going on too in June, so both (sports) have become the beasts. Trying to maintain that, and to feel like you can get done what you’re supposed to get done, is a job and it will take a lot of work.”
To that end, football meetings for the 2010 season are thus well under way.
“At our next meeting we’re going to talk about defense, because Pat is going to be doing the defense… and that’s kind of the same situation: Pat’s not Dale, so he’s obviously not going to call the defense exactly the same as Dale did,” Wolfe said. “We’ll talk about what his approach is going to be for game preparation and that kind of stuff.”
For his part, Walsh also runs his own LHS program — he’s head coach of the Lady Chiefs basketball program — but he’s also looking forward to the challenge.
“I’m excited for the opportunity,” Walsh said. “We’ve had a great defense at Logan. I’m going to get with Kelly, but I don’t see our defense changing much. You’d be crazy to do that. We’re going to coach the kids up, we’re going to stop the run like we always have (and) we’ll give some different looks when we need to make stops in pass situations. It’s not going to be a whole lot different.”
Wolfe and his staff also face the challenge of replacing 18 of 22 starters — including state Division II co-offensive Player of the Year Patrick Angle and two-time second-team DII All-Ohio receiver Mason Mays — from last season’s 11-1 team that won Logan’s sixth-straight Southeastern Ohio Athletic League title (and tied the league record for consecutive SEOAL victories with 34) and won a playoff game for a second-straight season.
Along those lines, the first question for Wolfe: Will the Chiefs still run the spread offense?
“With the athletes we had last year there were so many things those kids could do,” Wolfe said. “From what I’ve seen out of the younger guys, with Jordan Jurgensmier, Dylan Cavinee and that group of juniors, offensively we’re still going to be running the spread… but it’s going to be more of a hybrid spread because we’re going to have to be able to run the ball, too. We’re going to have to do a few things differently.
“We have one returning lineman (Tim King), so we’re going to have to find four guys right away (for the O-line),” he added. “That’s going to determine a lot of what we feel we can and can’t do.”
While the Chieftain football cupboard is far from bare, obviously next year’s team won’t have near the experience of this year’s senior class.
“Our junior class reminds me a lot of Derek Harden and Alex Penrod’s group that had to sit behind the (Joey and Johnny) Conrad gang who never really got a chance to shine until their senior (2001 season) year,” Wolfe said. “These guys have had to do the same thing; they’ve sat behind Patrick and Mason and watched them play and really haven’t been able to get in there and show what they can do.
“They’re talented kids,” he added, “and they’re thinking ‘this is my time. This is our chance to go out there and show what we can do.’ So I think they’re hungry to get out there and play, and that goes a lot for football: if you have the hunger there, that will take you places.”
To that end, Wolfe is always looking for new and exciting angles to keep things fresh.
“That’s why I watched all the bowl games with a pad and pencil in my lap — anytime I saw something that I thought stuck out I wrote it down,” he said. “The kids get excited about those kind of things, too, and the kids have to get excited about things you do and you have to keep it fresh. Once it gets monotonous and dry, it’s harder to get anything accomplished.”
Wolfe passed up several coaching opportunities, both real and rumor-driven (“I was the head coach at Jackson, and I was the head coach at Warren, and I hadn’t talked to either of them,” he said with a laugh), to remain at his alma mater.
“I passed up several other jobs (including an actual offer from Warren on a second occasion),” he noted, “but I bleed purple. It would have been hard to do. We love this area and we love the school district. We weren’t going to move our kids out of here, and I couldn’t see living in Logan and driving someplace else. That just wasn’t going to work.”
Another thing that’s not going to change: the Chieftains’ goals.
“Obviously our first goal is to win the league championship,” he said, “and those first two or three games (to open the season) are real important. Winning is what you want to do, but it also sets the tone for the season. You want to have some positive things happen those first couple weeks.”
Logan opens its 2010 season with a pair of solid Division I programs, Lancaster at home and a tough road game at Pickerington North.
“High school kids have a mentality where they can get down real quick, and in football you can’t afford that,” Wolfe said. “You only get 10 weeks, and if you get down and it takes you two or three weeks to recover, then you’re looking at the end of the season already.”
He knows there will come a time when the reality of the situation finally hits.
“Something will happen when I think ‘I get to decide that now’ or ‘that’s something I have to do now,’ ” he said. “I have a lot to soak up. Before long it will hit me. Everyone’s on board, and to me that’s the big thing. Everybody’s ready to go, and we’re all pretty excited about it.”
And Wolfe also knows that Amyx’s legacy of success will cast a long shadow, and he doesn’t want to let down his longtime mentor and friend.
“(Logan football) is in my system. I have purple blood,” he said. “Dale built a great program, and we don’t want to do anything to let it slip. I know he wouldn’t be happy with us.”
He has some big shoes to fill and I wish him the very best. Go Chiefs