Wanted: Players
Tuesday, September 09, 2003
Mark Znidar
THE COLUMBUS DISPATCH
With football season having kicked off, Dale Carlson’s lifestyle is similar to the frenetic two-minute drill of every other college coach.
There are 50- and 60-hour weeks front-loaded with speeches to alumni groups and students, recruiting trips to high-school games and meetings with players dealing with everything from academics to relationships with friends and family to realizing their potential on the field.
If Carlson doesn’t skip lunch, the meal usually consists of a halfeaten sandwich from a fast-food palace.
But the similarities between Carlson’s current existence and other college coaches end there.
While other coaches are drawing up game plans for Saturday, Carlson is preparing for a game at Walsh University on Sept. 4, 2004. That’s when Ohio Dominican University, which was founded in 1911, will play its first football game — ever.
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| Ohio Dominican University president Jack Calareso (far right) hopes that football coach Dale Carlson (center) will bring many players to the school. Already geared up to play next year are Carlo Smith, Zach Hamner and Randy Williams (left to right). |
At the moment, Carlson is trying to sell a program that doesn’t have a stadium, locker-room facilities, conference rooms or uniforms. Before the picture that accompanies this story was taken, he scrambled to find a football. He has one helmet.
"We don’t play a game for a year, but the clock is ticking," Carlson said. "You are constantly checking and rechecking your checklist. There are so many things to keep track of. We even have to come up with a design for the uniforms."
Football is such an infant at ODU that Carlson doesn’t know if he’ll have enough players to conduct full-scale spring practices. Twenty eight players are enrolled in school.
Why would Ohio Dominican think of adding a sport that has been a budget buster for many small colleges and a challenge to be competitive at other Ohio colleges such as Oberlin, Kenyon and Hiram? "
Because football makes a college campus complete," Carlson said. "You can build alumni functions and student activities around the weekend home games. There’s a buzz going around on campus. That’s what we want to bring here."
Football also is part of the school’s seven-year plan to boost enrollment from the current 2,500 full-time students to 5,000 and the resident community from 420 to 1,500.
At Ohio State, where there are approximately 48,000 students, the football players don’t make much of an impact on enrollment. But 125 or more players at Ohio Dominican would provide a 5 percent bump.
Ohio Dominican president Jack Calareso estimates it will cost $3 million to start football. The numbers he and the board of trustees project are the checks more than 100 players will write. Tuition is $17,200 and room and board is $6,000.
The Panthers will compete in the NAIA and play in the 17-team Mid-States Football Association with schools such as Malone, Urbana and Walsh.
Calareso stresses that Ohio Dominican doesn’t plan on becoming a national power at the expense of academics.
"Did you know that Florida State was once a women’s college like Ohio Dominican?" he said of the Division I football power. "But none of our players will be playing on Sunday (in the NFL). Our stadium initially will be modest. It will seat 2,000, and we don’t know if they’ll be portable seats or permanent seats at first. This won’t be the ’Shoe, where it’s football only. We’ll have Field Turf, and that’s because the stadium will serve intramurals and soccer as well as football."
Building something from scratch is daunting, but Calareso and Carlson are old hands at this game. Calareso was vice president of academic affairs and on the football committee when Merrimack (Mass.) College added the sport in 1997 and was president at Briar Cliff (Iowa) University when it began football in 2001. Carlson was Tri-State (Ind.) University’s first football coach in ’95.
Carlson admits he made a few mistakes at Tri-State.
"I was flying by the seat of my pants, to tell you the truth," he said. "I was lucky that I had an athletic director (Butch Perchan) who had done his homework before I arrived. I had a plan, but I improvised daily."
Perchan, who is director of external relations at Florida Gulf Coast University, remembers the legwork that went into putting the Thunder on the field.
"It took two years of homework before we even hired Dale," Perchan said. "It will be easier for Dale at Ohio Dominican than at Tri-State. At Tri-State, we were in that northeast corner of Indiana with nothing around. We wanted to increase enrollment to 1,300 from 1,100. We figured we’d be able to do that if we could get a few engineering students away from Purdue.
"At Ohio Dominican, Dale can hit some home runs being in that Columbus area. I think he can build a nice little program spending $2 million or so. The key is fund-raising.
At Tri-State we got our equipment money from a donation from a football fan named Phil Gettig, and we got our locker room from Ralph Ketner, who got the Food Lion chain started. That’s what you’ve got to do." Tri-State finished 2-6 that first season, although there was a 32-24 victory over Taylor in the inaugural game. By the fourth season, the Thunder was 11-3 and third in the NAIA playoffs.
With the help of Chris Oliver, who assisted Ohio State recruiting coordinator Bill Conley as a graduate assistant last season, Carlson said he should be able to recruit better players. (Former Indiana University coach Johnny Pont was hired as director of football operations to raise funds and troubleshoot.)
"I went to the Kickoff Classic at Crew Stadium," Carlson said of a high-school football doubleheader, "and I saw more recruits in those two games than I would in six weeks of recruiting in Indiana. There are so many more good high-school football players in Ohio than Indiana.
"Plus, I’m getting more support from the administration, the faculty and the admissions office than I ever did at Tri-State. We’re going to be able to bring in hordes of players who are academically capable."
Randy Williams, a running back from Watkins Memorial, enrolled at Ohio Dominican because he was intrigued by the possibilities.
"Everything is going to be new here. We’re starting from scratch," Williams said. "We can all say, ‘Hey, we were here when there was nothing.’ But what we’re really thinking is becoming the first team to get a championship ring. That’s what we want to leave behind."
Place-kicker and punter Zach Hamner of Thomas Worthington said fellow students have been stopping him to talk football.
"People are genuinely excited about this and they’re talking," he said. "We haven’t even practiced as a team, but we’re developing a bond as players and starting a (presence) on campus. We can’t practice yet, but we’re getting ready mentally."
Carlson has told the players the first season will be worth the wait.
"I remember standing on the sideline that first game for Tri-State, seeing the standing-roomonly crowd and all the players," he said. "There was so much satisfaction. It was only the start, but what a start.
"I’ve told our players that starting football is like climbing a ladder: It’s one rung at a time with your foot firmly planted on each rung."
Reprinted with permission - The Columbus Dispatch © September 9, 2003.
