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AFM Magazine

AFM Magazine


High School Coach of the Year

Sweet Redemption A year after being blamed for a bad call, Mike Mischler brings home the state trophy
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ON A WARM SUMMER DAY LAST JULY, CATHEDRAL Prep coach Mike Mischler and 13 of his senior football players loaded into his Jeep Cherokee and a rented passenger van to begin a journey through the nation's heartland.

The two-vehicle caravan's four-day swing through the college towns of South Bend, Ind., Iowa City, Iowa, East Lansing, Mich., and Ann Arbor, Mich., was an informal meet-and-greet trip for Mischler and his players - a way for them to see some campuses, meet some coaches, and get one step closer to making their dreams of playing college football reality.

It was also the first step the players would take together toward becoming the first football team in school history to win a state championship, something that had barely eluded the Ramblers the year before.

Flashback to 1999: Pinned deep in their own territory with three minutes left to play, Mischler elects to preserve his team's 13-7 lead by punting from his own end zone rather than take a safety.

The only thing that could possibly go wrong did, as a Central Bucks West defender blocked Ed Hinkel's punt and recovered it for a touchdown. The subsequent extra point gave the Bucks their third-straight Class AAAA championship and sent Mischler and Cathedral Prep home wondering, "What if?"

"It was something I took very hard," says Mischler, 31, American Football Monthly's High School Coach of the Year. "A lot of people blamed me for the loss."

Following the heart-breaking defeat, Mischler met with his seniors, then he turned his attention to his returning players. "I addressed the situation that we had the ability to get back to (the championship game)," he says. "I talked to every single kid on that football team separately regarding whether or not they were going to be committed."

Since returning to Cathedral Prep, an all-male Catholic school of about 670 students situated in the heart of Erie, Pa., Mischler has learned about commitment and how much he loves to coach. He played for the Ramblers and was a preseason All-American pick by Street & Smith in 1986. He went on to play at William & Mary before quitting the team after two seasons for what he calls "ego" reasons.

Not long after college, however, Mischler was back at Prep again, serving as the freshman coach during the 1992 season. But his full-time job was in sales, a lucrative pursuit that gave him a six-figure salary and dreams of the good life. In 1993, he had no plans to stay in Erie. Once he was married, he and his then-fiancee, Mary, planned to put down new roots in California, where Mischler had a job with a surgical supplies company.

But by the time the honeymoon ended, Mischler found himself unemployed when the company closed his division. The newlyweds decided to move back to Erie. Mischler was eager to start coaching again.

"We loaded up my personal belongings and drove from California right straight into McDonald Field, which is where our practice field is," he recalls. "I got out, she sat in the truck, and I jumped onto the field so I wouldn't miss anymore time coaching the kids. She didn't know what she had gotten in to."

Five years later, Mischler applied for and got the school's head coaching job and made football his full-time pursuit.

"I really believe that things work out for a reason," Mischler says. "When I went to Prep, I took a $65,000 pay cut. But I'm 31 years old and I've lived the dream of three seasons that most coaches have to wait a lifetime to get to. I really feel blessed that way. (My wife and I) really put a lot of faith in each other and in our team. And it just worked out for us."

Mischler inherited a team that was five years removed from its last winning season and league championship. But expectations were still high - partly because the sophomore class was coming off an undefeated, unscored upon season at the freshman level, and partly because former Notre Dame offensive line coach Joe Moore had agreed to help guide the team.

Moore, who coached at Notre Dame for nine years, came to Cathedral Prep in 1998 as a favor to some friends and school boosters. The year before, he had been fired by the Fighting Irish and he filed a well-publicized age-discrimination suit against the university. Moore, now 68, was awarded an $86,000 settlement after a jury found the university had fired him because of his age.

Not completely new to Erie, Moore coached at cross-town McDowell High School in the 1960s, and he had a grandson attending Prep.

"I don't think it's possible be a very good coach unless you have somebody who you can learn from," says Mischler, "and he was the guy I learned from.

"He taught me everything I know about the game. I learned how to play it from my high school coaches and college coaches, but as far as how to coach it, I learned it from Joe."

Moore left Mischler's staff and re-retired from coaching in '99 after helping the team to records of 9-5 and 13-1. That left Mischler without his mentor on the sidelines, but with an intensive lesson or two of Coaching 101 was under his belt.

"Somebody told me after the (1999 state championship), you learn more in one loss than you do in a thousand wins. And I think that's something that is so true," Mischler says. "There's so many things that I learned that helped us prepare for this year. It made me personally stronger and it made our team stronger in the long run."

Mischler is an admitted subscriber to the coaching cliche' of taking one game at a time. But the pressure to win was high at the start of last season. The Ramblers were ranked No. 1 in the state and in the top 10 in most national polls.

"People were saying that anything less than a state championship win would be a disappointing season. I always felt those were unrealistic expectations," says Mischler. "Knowing that that was the situation, I felt the best thing to do was give ourselves some mini-goals and try to hit all of those.

"The first goal was to win the Erie Metro League, the second was to win the Allegheny Football Conference, third was to win the District 10 championship, then to win the state championship."

As the season wore on, the goals began to fall one by one. The Ramblers pulverized their first 11 opponents by a combined score of 560-96, and the league, conference and district titles were in the bank. Only the fourth and final goal - a state championship - remained.

On Dec. 9, Cathedral Prep once again found itself in a battle-to-the-finish with Central Bucks West. The memories of last season's near-miss - and the Bucks' state-record 59-game winning streak - came to an end when junior tailback Jawan Walker scored from 4 yards out to give the Ramblers a 41-35 overtime victory.

The hardware from Cathedral Prep's first state championship in 77 years of playing football is already safely stashed away in the school's trophy case, but Mischler is far from finished with the 17 starters who will graduate in the spring.

He and his staff have sent colleges over 600 game tapes and color packets of recruiting information on his players. It's the part of the job that Mischler takes most seriously.

"I don't care if people say I'm a good coach or bad coach as far as Xs and Os are concerned," says Mischler. "If there's anything at all I have an ego about, it's I really try to help these kids out when it comes to college time."

Blue-chippers Hinkel (6-1, 170, WR-DB), Charles Rush (6-3, 286, DE), Joe DiPre (6-5, 240, LB) and Dale Williams (6-6, 300, OL) are the centerpiece recruits from Cathedral Prep's Class of 2001. Walker, all-state his junior year, will be highly sought next year.

Once Signing Day passes, Mischler's attention will turn to next year's title defense. And it will start with a summer road trip.

"I don't have a lot of I-A players next year, so I'll probably take some kids on a tour of I-AA and II schools out East and make sure that they see these schools," Mischler says. "Not all these kids' parents can afford to take them all over the place. It's something I just feel is my job." s


"I really believe that things work out for a reason," Mischler says. "When I went to Prep, I took a $65,000 pay cut. But I'm 31 years old and I've lived the dream of three seasons that most coaches have to wait a lifetime to get to."

The Mischler File

Cathedral Preparatory (Erie, Pa.)
2000: 14-0, Class AAAA state champs,
No. 3 national ranking
Record at school: 36-6, 3 years

1994-97 / Player, OT / Cathedral Prep

1997-98 / Player, OT / William & Mary

1992-97 / Freshman coach / Cathedral Prep

1998-present / Head coach / Cathedral Prep






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