Orrville Football Coaching History

The 1976 Red Rider coaching staff. Also pictured are (front, from left) Mike Bushi, Fred Blosser, Bill Sturgeon; (back, from left) Bob Shonk, head coach Mo Tipton and Ron Zook. (Photo courtesy of The Daily Record)

As we approach 600 wins as a program, I thought it would be neat to share this with my readers....the complete list of Orrville football head coaches.  If this post gets buried over time, you can find the list under the "Football" tab at the top of the page.

Not too many programs can claim to have 600 wins and also boast 22 playoff appearances.  I'd say the number of schools that can is less than a dozen....and having good coaches over the years is a big reason why we're poised to join the 600 win club.

From looking at this list of past Red Rider coaches, I plucked some interesting facts of note....

• From our first season in 1903 until now, we've had a total of 26 coaches...but just 4 since 1954, which is pretty incredible
• From 1903 to 1954, we had 22 head coaches over 45 years of football, an average tenure of just over 2 years per coach.  If there's ever been a better example of continuity leading to success, I haven't seen it.  
• The program has 596 wins, with the four winningest coaches (Shunkwiler, Tipton, McMillan and Davault) accounting for 413 of those 596 wins.  That's 70% of our program's wins from 4 coaches that cover the last 57 years of Red Rider Tradition.
• Blog reader Vince pointed out that Harry Strobel (not Henry as I originally listed him) went on to coach Barberton football and was eventually named Ohio State's freshman coach after his time at Orrville.  Reading this link, it sounded like Strobel was almost chosen as Ohio State's head coach in 1951, but that went to Woody Hayes instead.  Strobel won a state basketball title at Bellevue in 1945 and a state football title in 1947 at Barberton (where he coached Bo Schembechler) before moving on to Ohio State. Great read, and thanks to a loyal reader for pointing out Strobel's history.
• Current coach Doug Davault has the highest average wins per season (8.3) of any Orrville coach.  Mo Tipton averaged 7.3 wins per season and Coach Mac just below at 7.27 wins per season.  Having an extra few rounds of playoff games certainly helped Coach Mac and Coach Davault's numbers.  About a third of Coach Tipton's years of coaching came when there were no playoffs, and when playoffs did begin in 1972, there were only a few rounds...not the 5 rounds that exist now.

Enjoy reading.