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AFM Magazine

AFM Magazine


Schutt Sports: Regional High School Coaches of the Year

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SOUTHEAST

Nick Coleman
Venice High School (Venice, Fla.)
2000: 15-0, Class 5A state champs, Record at school: 21-5, 2 years

Venice High School coach Nick Coleman is a little ahead of his time. At 31, he's already led a team to a state championship and a national ranking.

Rarely has such a young head coach accomplished so much in the highly competitive world of Florida prep football. And when Coleman started his second full season as head coach of the Indians last August, expectations weren't high. Despite winning the district title for the first time in 16 years and qualifying for the playoffs for the first time in 19 years , Venice was nowhere to be found in the preseason state rankings.

"We knew we snuck up on some people last year," says Coleman, who was the school's defensive coordinator from 1996-98 when the Indians compiled a 9-20 record. "We knew we'd have to play some good, hard-nosed football this year because we don't have some of the Division I athletes that some of the teams that we play have."

Although the talent may not have been up to snuff in the eyes of recruiters from, say, the Southeastern or the Atlantic Coast conferences, it was more than good enough to roll to a 15-0 record that included a 77-14 drubbing of Dwyer (Palm Beach Gardens) in the Class 5A state-title game.

"It was the first game that we put all three phases together - offense, defense and special teams," says Coleman, whose team broke five state records that night including most points scored in a championship game. Coaching the school to its first-ever state championship was particularly sweet for Coleman, a 1987 Venice graduate,, and his staff. His running backs coach, Jim Powell, was Coleman's head coach and had a 34-game winning streak in the '80s, but never made it past the second round playoffs.

SOUTHWEST

Allan Trimble
Jenks High School (Okla.)
2000: 14-0, Class 6A state champs,
Record at school: 66-4, 5 years

After winning the Class 6A state championship in each of the past five seasons, the Jenks Trojans have cemented themselves as a dynasty. So, why has the entrance to the stadium become something of a revolving door for coach Allan Trimble's assistants?

Call it the price of success.

Last season alone, Trimble had to replace more than half of his nine-member staff, as assistants accepted head-coaching posts at other schools.

"They've been a pretty hot commodity," says Trimble, 37, who this season led his team to a fifth state championships in his five years as head coach.

It's little wonder why talented, young coaches would want to hone their craft at a place like Jenks, located in suburban Tulsa. The place simply reeks of success.

"I think (the 2000 state championship) that we won was the 107th in athletics at Jenks," says Trimble, who first came to the school as an assistant in 1990. "We average about nine championships a year in the 18 varsity sports that we have. When you look it, it's absolutely amazing."

Amazing,, but not hard to explain given the community support the school enjoys.

"Football at Jenks is still the thing to do on Friday night. The community turns out in boatloads to come watch us, and the support of our kids here is amazing. The community financially supports anything the kids need," Trimble says.

And it's paid off. All 11 defensive starters from the 1997 team are playing college ball, including 10 at Division I-A.

"It's reached a point now that each senior class shows up and they don't want to be the class that doesn't pass the torch," he says. "I think that's really carried us."

MIDWEST

Tony Severino
Rockhurst High School (Kansas City, Mo.)
2000: 14-0, Class 5A state champs
Overall record: 211-64-1 in 24 years

Tony Severino asks his team each year what will motivate them. Without fail, their goal is to win a state championship for Rockhurst High. While the aspiration is not unique, the expectations that underpin it are.

Rockhurst, a 1,000-student, all-male Jesuit school, last tasted state-championship glory in 1987 before this year's Hawklets capped a perfect 14-0 season with a 23-7 win over Mehlville (St. Louis) in the Missouri 5A championship game. It was the school's sixth state football title in 32 years.

"We're always in the thick of it, either in the state semifinals or in the championship game," says Severino, 52, who now has four titles at Rockhurst and another in Kansas making him the only man to win state championships on both sides of the state line.

"We've had a lot of great years, but this one was kind a magical," says Severino, who was USA Today's national coach of the year. "It seems like we never had a bad day, we never had a bad practice - these kids responded to every bit of adversity that hit us."

Severino had to replace 18 of 22 starters from the team that finished runner-up in 1999. "As the season started to unfold and we started to run the table, we got to talking that nobody has ever won 14 (games) at Rockhurst. Once we made it into the playoffs, our driving force to get there was, 'Guys, you have a chance to be the best.' "

Severino's philosophy is rooted in the teachings of Joe Paterno. His team even takes the field in all-white helmets - like Penn State's - and decals are only awarded for hustle.

Like Joe Pa, he says, "I look at all the kids as my sons, and I would want my son to be treated this way and I expect my c oaches to treat them that way."

WEST

Jerry Jaso
Poly High School (Long Beach, Calif.)
2000: 14-0, CIF Southern Div. I champs,
Record at school: 75-6-1, 6 years (82-31-2, previous 15 years as co-head coach)

Few programs have had the success that Poly High School in Long Beach, Calif., has had in the last decade. Wins have come by the bushel and a steady stream of college prospects have rolled out the doors.

The source of this success is coach Jerry Jaso, a former undergraduate football coaching assistant at UCLA and self-proclaimed disciple of basketball coaching great John Wooden.

"Wooden's philosophy was don't get too high when you win and don't get too low when you lose," says Jaso, 50, whose run of California Interscholastic Federation titles might someday rival the number Wooden won while establishing UCLA as a basketball powerhouse in the 1960s and '70s.

"Just try to get better every day," Jaso says, continuing to paraphrase Wooden. "That sounds very simple but it's very true."

Jaso came to Poly as a defensive coach in the early '80s and was named co-head coach with Thomas Whiting in 1985. The Jackrabbits won 82 games over the next 10 years and shared one Southern Section Division I title. Then, in 1995, the school named Jaso its sole head coach, and 75 wins and at least a share of three more section crowns followed. Poly has been ranked in the final top 5 of USA Today's national rankings in each of the past four seasons. "There's a lot pressure when you're ranked that high because basically you go into the season thinking if we lose a game, we did a bad job," Jaso says. "But if your kids are able to keep their perspective, and, this is the oldest coaching cliche of all time, but if they can take it week by week and get better every week, then you have a chance to be as good as you're touted to be."

EAST

Darrell Mayne
Upper Arlington H.S. (Columbus, Ohio)
2000: 15-0, Division I state champs
Overall school record: 37-3, 3 years

Winning the large-school championship in a football-rich state like Ohio is hard. But now that he's done it, describing the achievement is easy for Darrell Mayne of the Upper Arlington Golden Bears.

"We likened the football season to climbing a mountain," says Mayne, 53, who just finished his third season at Upper Arlington. "We talked about what it's like to view the mountain from the bottom.

"The quitters are those who see how high the mountain is and decide that they want no part of it. The campers go part way up, and all of a sudden it starts getting steeper, so they decide to pitch tents there and say at least we went part way. The climbers, which are really the small percentage of our society, are the ones who are just going to keep striving in spite of the whiteouts and the lack of oxygen and everything else."

Climbing this mountain was a little bit like scaling Mount Everest for the school nestled in an upper-middle class suburb of Columbus. No Division I school in Ohio's Central Section had won a state title since Ohio went to playoffs in the early 1970s.

"Central Ohio kind of took us under its wing as we went farther and farther into the playoffs," says Mayne, who led the team to a 10-2 record and the regional semifinals last year. "If anyone had a chance in central Ohio to win the Division I crown, it was Upper Arlington. And although that's very gratifying to have that recognition, it nevertheless produces more pressure for the kids."

But, he says, Upper Arlington is no stranger to state titles. "I believe our school has won now 82 state championships, which puts us second nationally," says Mayne, a math teacher "We have tremendous academics, tremendous music - you name it."






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