IndianaBanana
Well-known buffoon
If I were a bettin' man and the search committee went with someone from the community, my money would be on Toby Metzger.
He's youngish (mid-30s), Fort Recovery guy through and through, a pure competitor in his day, has helped coach many sports in different capacities, football nut/student of the game, and I think he teaches at the school (could be wrong on that one). He also graduated with current athletic director, Aimee Pottkotter (probably doesn't move the needle, but figured I'd mention it.)
He was on the coaching staff for the stretch of good seasons, including the state champion season. I've heard from a handful of players on those teams that Metzger and Dave Blockberger knew how to get the most out of them than Niekamp did. He decided to move down to the junior high ranks after (from what I understand) bucking heads with Brent on coaching philosophy. I can absolutely see that. Where Niekamp wanted his players to kind of fit a certain idealist mold, Metzger (who was a pretty cocky boisterous player in high school) lets his kids play with emotion and has shown he can coach different kinds of personalities. Which I see as a good thing, as we all know kids are just different than they use to be.
Just look at the JH numbers from the past season for FR compared to the HS.
26 for the high school and mid to high 40s between 7th and 8th grade.
He and his JH assistant coaches are doing things differently at that level and it's working. Boots on the ground, getting those kids to come out and delivering on the aspect of fun that's attractive to these boys.
The fertileness of homegrown winners in football isn't exactly there in Fort Recovery like it is in the other MAC communities. The whole "winners breed winners" is true. We're finally at a stage in our program history where dads in the community are starting to have 2nd generation Indian football players go through the program. But for the majority of our history those dads were players on teams that didn't win anymore than 2 or 3 games on average. It won't be for another 12 or so years where we start having kids who's dads were on the winning teams get to high school. Not saying that those kids can't be good or anything, but we need to develop an expectation of winning and not a "hope we can beat them, if not we'll 'tip their hat to 'em' and be excited that our next opponent is Parkway."
That's just my thoughts though. Whuh-do-I-know.
