The recent completion of the high school football season means Chris Hawkins is already eyeing the 2015 campaign which will be his twentieth as a head coach in North Central Ohio.
“You end one season and your focus is on the next one,” said Hawkins, who has been the top man of the Galion High School gridiron program since 2007.
The 2014 season was a milestone one for the mentor, although he didn’t know so. Galion’s regular-season finale at Unckrich on Halloween night was the 200th game for Hawkins as a head coach.
A 1982 graduate of Wynford High School, Hawkins’ head-coaching career began at his alma mater 20 years ago. He led the Royals to an 8-3 record and their first appearance in the state playoffs tournament. He would serve four more years in Holmes Township, never winning less than eight games in a season.
When he left, he had compiled a stellar record of 41-10 (.804). The Royals won North Central Conference championships twice, and thrice, they finished second.
In 1999, Hawkins left Wynford for Willard. The Crimson Flashes exploded out of the gate going 10-2 with eventual University of Akron star and Cleveland Browns’ third round pick Charlie Frye at quarterback. Willard tied for the Northern Ohio League title and shut out Bellevue 13-0 on the Redmen’s home turf in the opening round of the playoffs.
Just two weeks earlier, the Crimson Flashes defeated those same Redmen 28-21 in double-overtime, also in Bellevue.
“They said it was a fluke the first time we beat them,” Hawkins recalled. “They wanted another shot at us. Well, we beat them again up there, holding them scoreless. If I have to pick one, I’d say that’s the biggest win of my career.”
The following week, Willard fell to Columbus Bishop Watterson 33-27 in Marion. Watterson would eventually lose to Poland Seminary 20-13 in the Division III championship game, finishing with a 13-2 record.
“That was a really tough loss,” Hawkins said. “I thought we had a team that could go to the state final four. It’s not often you get to coach a team you feel that way about. It was very disappointing.”
Hawkins was named the Northwest District co-Coach of the Year in Div. III. Five more seasons with the Crimson Flashes translated into a 31-23 record.
Hawkins didn’t coach in 2005. His father was dying of Amyotrophic Lateral Sclerosis (Lou Gehrig’s Disease).
“That was a tough year,” the junior Hawkins said. “I’m glad I got to spend more time with him before he was gone. I didn’t come from an athletic family, but my parents supported me in whatever I wanted to try. My dad was my friend.”
In 11 seasons as a head coach (1994-2004), Hawkins had compiled an 82-35 record, three league championships, and four playoffs appearances. Having sat out 2005, the 41-year-old thought his coaching days might have come to an end.
“The passion was gone,” he stated. “It just wasn’t there any more.”
But a coaching rival thought otherwise.
“(Head coach) Steve Gilbert of Tiffin Columbian gave me a call one day,” Hawkins recalled. “He told me he didn’t think football is out of me and offered me a job as an assistant coach. He said, ‘Come and see if it’s still in your blood. I think it is.’ I really misread him (Gilbert) when I coached against him. I didn’t like him. I ended up finding out he’s a great guy in many ways.”
Hawkins served as an assistant at Columbian during the 2006 season and has coached since. In the spring of 2007, Hawkins briefly accepted the head coaching job at Ridgedale High School in Marion County.
However, Ridgedale had no guarantee of a teaching position. Living in Bucyrus, teaching in Willard and coaching in Morral was less than ideal.
So when Galion offered him their coaching position in June, he accepted.
“I had spent four to six weeks with those (Ridgedale) kids,” Hawkins said. “When the Galion job was offered to me, I took it. I completely understand why the Ridgedale people would be upset about it. It wasn’t an easy decision to make, but I had to do what was best for my family. Again, there was a lot of prayer that went into it.”
Galion had won several league titles, and a Division II state championship in 1985, but In the five years leading up to Hawkins’ hiring, Galion was 3-47.
The optimistic coach knew he had his work cut out for him. He also had little more than two months before the season.
Not surprisingly, the Tigers won just once in his inaugural campaign.
“That was very hard to take,” he stated. “I knew things were bad, but I didn’t really know how bad. That was an eye-opener. I knew we had a lot of work to do, and a big part of it was getting the parents to buy into what needed to be done to turn things around,” he said.
Galion went 5-5 the next year, including a vital win against long-time league opponent Shelby in the 2008 season-finale giving the Tigers their first non-losing record since 2001.
Then in, 2009, the Tigers recorded their first undefeated regular season in 24 years and their first playoff appearance in two decades. After losing 20 seniors, the Tigers would go 5-5 once again.
The most successful three-year stint Galion has experienced was from 2011-13. After joining the North Central Conference, the Tigers were 26-6, including back-to-back 9-2 seasons and NCC Black Division titles in 2012 and ’13.
With the folding of the NCC, Galion recently completed its first season in the Mid Ohio Athletic Conference. A member of the Red Division, the 2014 Tigers went 6-5 overall, including a 4-3 conference mark. They were topped by Triway in the first round of the post-season.
In 19 years, Hawkins-led teams have tallied a 135-66 record, a winning mark of .672. Included are six league championships and eight playoff berths. He is 53-31 at Galion in eight years. The victories and games coached (84) are program standards.
“Anytime I have success, I attribute it to the man in charge (God). The good Lord has surrounded me with a lot of good people. Through the years, the job has become more demanding in terms of time and commitment. I have three daughters and no sons,” he reflected.
“But every season I coach, I feel like I have 40 to 50 sons. Being a parent of athletes myself, I think I might see things differently as a coach than I did before I was a parent. I’m a better person than I was when I began coaching”
Jon Kleinknecht ‘s career of covering sports in North Central Ohio began in 1980.
