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Left to right, Chad Otte, B.J. Wolters and Tim Goodwin review information on a tablet during Marion Local's Division VII state title game victory over Kirtland on Dec. 3, 2022. B.J. Wolters played for Goodwin on the Flyers' first state championship team in 2000, and Otte was the quarterback on Marion's 2001 state title team.
When you look at the Marion Local football dynasty, the stats, records and accomplishments of the last 25 years can be a bit gaudy to the casual observer.
But behind it all is a humble, yet dedicated, coaching staff that doesn't count trophies or worry about winning streaks. Instead, the focus is on teamwork, continuous improvement, and achieving perfection. The wins, and the trophies, take care of themselves.
Tim Goodwin heads an eight-man staff with more than 100 years of combined coaching experience.
"Obviously the staff is everything," Goodwin said. "It's the head coach's biggest job to recruit, retain, train - if necessary - but if you look at the successful programs, you see those assistant coaches there year after year, and it's everything."
Goodwin, who also serves as the high school principal, is the son of legendary Allen East football coach Bill Goodwin, who won more than 200 games during his career with the Mustangs.
Since coming to Marion Local in 1999, Goodwin has guided the Flyers to 13 state championships and 12 Midwest Athletic Conference championships. Of Goodwin's 307 wins, 99 have come in the playoffs.
His staff includes Dan Koenig, Kevin Otte, Greg Bruns, Jacob Sherrick, Laden Delawder, Adam Bertke, Chad Otte, Brian Wolters and Mitch Eversole. The varsity assistants don't really have individual titles, as they divide their responsibilities by playing positions.
"There's a lot of factors there, including player development during the off-season and in-season," Goodwin said. "Being passionate about what you're doing, being able to relate to the kids at the same time is also important. Everybody has their strengths. Some are X and O's guys and others are the motivators. The team is a living, breathing organization, so there's no set code on how to handle it. You need a combination of all that. That's the beauty of coaching football, you have bigger staffs so you get to have guys that are really good at their roles."
Most of the coaches are Marion Local graduates with a wide range of experience, and all with a good idea of what makes the Flyer program tick.
"We're very fortunate with the strong family values in our community and our parents have allowed us - in all sports, not just football - to coach their children hard," said Koenig, who has 31 years of coaching experience and also serves as the school's athletic director. "They allow us to get on their kids, and to work 'em and to challenge 'em, and it's been a blessing in this community that they've allowed that. You don't see that everywhere."
Bertke, the Flyers all-time career passing leader with 6,272 yards (2011-13), credits the culture of the Marion community.
"I go back to the work ethic, the families and your upbringing," he said. "Obviously we're a farming community where the kids are taught how to work hard at a young age. That kind of carries into football."
Another part of the Marion culture is showing support for its teams.
"Some of the kids go on and play D-2 or D-3 football, and they get more fan support at Marion Local High school than they do at those colleges," Sherrick said. "Community support is tremendous. For some of our games there's really crappy weather and you look up in the stands and there's still a bunch of people. Also, the kids in this community do a great job of supporting our high school teams."
Marion coach Jacob Sherrick gives instructions to the defense during the 2022 state championship game.
For Wolters, who was a member of Goodwin's first two teams in 1999 and 2000, keeping the focus where it needs to be is key.
"I think it's just focusing on things you can control," he said. "You can control your effort, you can control your attitude. You don't worry about bigs things, you just worry about the next play. That goes back 25 years - 'play the next play' - that's ingrained pretty deep into the fabric of the whole program."
Other than a few exceptions, Marion Local's success has come without a lot of Division I college recruits. Twenty-three year coaching veteran Kevin Otte says the Flyers understand the old cliché, "there's no I in team."
"Our kids understand that when they are on the field they're one of 11, whether it's special teams or what ever side of the ball they're on," he said. "They know how to work together, there's not necessarily a superstar that they have to play with or rise up to be. We don't pinpoint a kid, and give him the ball 42 times a game because we want him to have all these stats. We're not that type of program."
The players and coaches also don't let their press clippings affect the size of their heads.
"I'm the newest guy here. I've only been here two years," Delawder said. "One of the first things I noticed is that none of our guys, and none of our coaches, drink the poison or believe the hype. Every year's a new year. Every week's a new week. So what, we won last week? This is a new week. For a kid who had 150 yards last week, so what. Everybody sees the bigger picture to what we're doing and the overall goal. It's not about 'me,' and I think that comes from the top down."
"The one thing we're always trying to do is play better than the week before and be as perfect as we can be," Koenig added. "That's the goal we're always setting for ourselves, not so much, 'Can we beat this team?' But rather, 'Can we be better than we were the week before?' "
With 21 years of coaching under his belt, Bruns said perfection is what the Marion coaches strive for.
"If our guys make a mistake, we expect them to fix it," he said. "The chase to be perfect, it's never ending. Like Friday night after we beat Minster, I went home and was in a pretty bad mood, and my wife said, 'What's wrong, you won?' And I said, 'The goal wasn't to win.'
"You're always chasing that goal of perfection," he went on. "That's what keeps me motivated."
Success certainly breeds success, and helps keep the Marion Local roster very healthy, but the Flyers also count on tradition and an active junior high program.
"The whole goal of the junior high program is to let them experience football," Goodwin said. "Let them have fun and let them want to come out as a high school kid. That's it. Junior high kids all get to play, and we don't care about wins or losses.
"It also goes back to community support," he continued. "Everyone comes to high school football games, and so those little kids grow up and they want to be that guy on the field. It's old-fashioned, but it still happens here at Marion Local."
"There's little kids that have a no. 11 jersey, a no. 4 jersey, a no. 25 jersey, or whatever, because they see that kid on the football field and think, 'I want to be like him,' " Kevin Otte added. "So at Christmas they get a jersey with that number, and when they get to high school they may have that number, and younger kids will be looking up to them.
"It's a cycle with the young kids looking up to the older kids, and that's how you keep the ball rolling."
During the same time span that the Flyers have accumulated 13 state championships, eight different MAC teams have won 20 additional state titles. Five times in his 25-year reign, Goodwin's teams have been eliminated from the playoffs by other MAC teams.
"Obviously, we are the beneficiary of the culture in the MAC, so we're battle-tested, and we've seen about everything," Goodwin said. "I think there's a lot of pride in the MAC, especially when you're playing a non-MAC school. Fear is a motivator and you don't want to be that team that gets upset. There's just a lot of pride in carrying the mantle."
