Jerry Bell is the most jovial runner-up you will ever meet. He is a big man with a big voice, his greetings more like bellowed hellos. It's nearly a week after the state championship game, the first appearance the school had ever made there in their 33-year quest for the title. Whitmer, so close to capping off a fairy tale 14-0 season, lost to the private, all-male Cincinnati preparatory school Archbishop Moeller. Since then, Bell's been busy meeting with college recruiters, doing interviews with reporters, and preparing for a banquet honoring his players in January. The whiteboard in his office has a few residual football schemes scribbled on it in red. His office door, which leads to state-of-the-art facilities, would have been swinging back and forth incessantly just seven days ago, dozens of players and coaches streaming in for practice. Today the room is quiet; there is only the faint squeaking sound of a deodorizing machine as it exhales a mist of fragrance every fifteen minutes.
We are sitting down, coach and reporter, to discuss the master plan he devised at 16 years old and the turn of events that led him to fulfill a lifelong dream. Bell was a sophomore at Whitmer High School and a player on the football team when he solidified his personal and professional goal list. He wanted to be a teacher and head coach someday. He met his high school sweetheart Stephanie, who was in the stands as his girlfriend then, and now, as his wife, sits on those same bleachers. "Everything I did was to put myself in position to be a head coach," Bell says. He went on to lead his alma matter to its first state championship game — a team that was ranked 12th in the nation by USA Today — and was awarded the title of Ohio Division 1 Coach of the Year. We caught up with him to get his take on winning and losing.
On the news frenzy
When you’re successful and you’re doing well, the media’s here. If you look at the beginning of the year, there was nobody here. There was nobody here during our two-a-days. I’m a first-year head coach. We’ve graduated all these kids from last year and no one thought that we would do anything. All of a sudden we start winning some football games and people start paying attention. Our kids got a lot of media time, and yeah it’s good for our program, but it also teaches our kids that you have to look at the people that have believed in you from the beginning.
On being the underdogs
To be honest with you, we were hoping to find a way to be 8 and 2, and to make the playoffs. And obviously our goal is to win the state title, our goal is to go 15 and 0. But if someone would’ve walked up to me and told me, ‘Hey I think you’re gonna make the state title game,’ I would’ve said ‘What?’ Because there were so many unknowns with this team and how our kids were gonna react to losing key guys from last year’s games. We’ve always been pegged underdogs. If you look at us on paper, yeah, we don’t match up, we’re not coming in loaded at every position. We got kids who probably will never play a down of football again after that Championship game, and they just love playing the game. They’re blue collar type kids, and they just go about their business. And I think when people look at us on paper – heights and weights, you know, compared to other teams, yeah we shouldn’t be where we’re at. But again, it comes down to what’s in your heart — when someone tells this group of kids that they can’t do something, you better watch out.
On football as a safe haven
If [the players are] having family issues or anything like that, they know that they can come here and talk to us. We try to teach them whatever’s going on in your life that’s chaotic, this is your safe haven. You come here, vent your frustrations, and use football in a positive way to help you. I’ve had many conversations with parents and players about personal things in their lives, looking for guidance and advice to how to overcome it. Sometimes it’s just that they need to get it off their chest, so here you are, you’re sitting here just listening. We have a lot of players that are like that… that just need somebody to support them. In this day and age, you’ve got so many single family homes, and parents who are trying to make ends meet and have jobs and all that, and then you also have some parents that just aren’t really there for their kids. You become a father figure to them, sometimes a mother figure to them, depending on what’s going on. You become that parent for them, especially since we, at times probably see them more than they see their parents.
On building a family
When we started our two-a-days, I had made the decision that we were going back to Ohio Northern University to begin our practices. It’s in the middle of nowhere, and it’s all about us there, there’s no media. What I was trying to do was, when we were on the field practicing, it was all about football. When we weren’t on the field, it was about trying to create team chemistry and a family bond. We didn’t have any superstars, we didn’t have kids that were game breakers, I didn’t think, on this football team, like we’ve had in the past. In the past we’ve had kids that could touch the football one time and go the distance. We didn’t have that. What I thought we needed to do was we needed to be able to play together and put long drives together, we needed to play great defense. But you have to do that together. And I’m a family man, I’m all about the traditions of this place, I’m all about loving your brother and being there, and having each other’s backs.
On the importance of trusting a coach
It’s huge. I think the minute that you start to doubt what’s going on, and you doubt the play calls, then you don’t perform at a high level. Just think about the real world and life, when you start to doubt your bosses or your work environment. You don’t work as hard, your demeanor changes, your attitude changes, you become more negative, and those kind of things are not tolerated.
On competition
I wouldn’t name anybody to a position at first. I wanted them to compete. I’m all about competition. Even a kid who thinks he’s gonna start, nope. You’re just gonna compete for your job. Then when it comes week one, we’ll make the decision. It doesn’t allow you to become complacent, makes you continue to work hard, you know, and work your skills. I think the minute you become satisfied with who you are as a person and your skill level and all that, is the minute that somebody else passes you up and, well, takes your job from you, whether it’s in the real world or in the football world. So we create a competition at all times. We’re always competing.
On sleep deprivation
The life is stressful — we don’t sleep much. I would go to bed, but you really don’t sleep. ‘Cause you’re trying to stay a step ahead. And especially for me for the first year, my mind won’t shut down, because I’m trying to think of all the aspects — are we on the right track, am I saying the right things, how’s the team looking — it’s constantly in your mind at all times. I’d get up at 4 o’clock in the morning, sometimes 3, thinking.
On the stakes for a high school coach vs. a college coach
I think it’s different. Here, there’s a lot of pressure on you to be successful. The community puts it on you. They expect Whitmer football to be excellent. They expect you to win. This day and age, all coaches are expected to produce, no matter what level you’re at. You could be in the youth football league, parents are expecting you to win. You know, they’re expecting you to coach their kids, and usually the biggest complaint is, ‘Oh, we’re not winning, we’re terrible, we’re losers. That’s a terrible coach ‘cause we’re not winning.’ Well, you know, typically, if you’ve got a coach that’s putting kids first and is working their tails off, sometimes you don’t win.
That’s what it comes down to, that’s what drives you. You feel it. When you look at college, the stakes in college coaching nowadays are just ridiculous. No one’s patient enough to allow these coaches to turn programs around and maintain them. You look at the Auburn University coach who just got fired a couple weeks ago, and he’s two years removed from winning a national title, and now he doesn’t have a job because he wasn’t producing fast enough for the people at Auburn. And it’s the same thing that’s going on all over the place.
On love and football
We have this pillow in my house that says ‘This marriage is interrupted for football season.’ My wife, she jokes, ‘I only signed up for ten weeks of this and now we’re going to week 15.’ But I come home after games and watch it on BCSN, and I’d see her in the crowd, cheering, going crazy. She’s my high school sweetheart.
On the importance of family
I ended up getting a scholarship to play football at Findlay, but it wasn’t very much money. It was really minimal money, but I only went for two days, and a lot of it had to do with is that she [Stephanie, his girlfriend at the time and now his wife] wasn’t there. I had lost my desire to play, but I also didn’t have my teammates with me anymore. I remember that feeling, I remember watching them pull away. It’s just lonely, there’s nothing, it’s just this emptiness, and over the course of two days I never got over it, so I came home and you know, I was motivated because I had people telling me I wasn’t going to make it now.
On game day
I don’t eat. I eat breakfast only. I can’t eat. I’ve just never eaten on game day; one of the routine quirks. Especially going into Start, I’ll be honest with you, Start game I thought I was going to throw up during pre-game. I’ve never had that feeling, because I was so nervous. Because I didn’t want to blow it, I didn’t want to screw up what we had. I can’t eat during game day.
On what it's like in the stadium
At some point, I hear, when we come out for the pre-game. I hear the announcer, I hear him — don’t know what he says. But after I hear him, I get into my own world. I don’t hear anything else. I get down to the sideline, I 100 percent focused on what’s going on for the game plan. I’m hearing my coaching staff. I don’t hear the crowd noise. It’s hard to describe. Say you’re daydreaming and people say you’re out in outer space, or whatever. That’s what it’s kinda like ‘cause you tune out everything going around you and you are just 100 percent focused on one thing. That’s what happens for us.
On his coaching demeanor
I can be a pretty fiery guy, and fiery personality, and I can have a short fuse. Under Joe [Palka, former Whitmer head football coach] I learned how to control my emotions in a game. I learned how to control my emotions through practice, because the kids feed off your emotions. So if you are in a panic mode, kids become panicked. If you’re nice and calm, your demeanor is calm, then the kids react that way. So Joe brought that in. To be honest with you that’s how I changed, and became a better coach. Not only because my knowledge grew under Joe, but he also showed me that we needed to remain more positive and that we needed to get our emotions out of the game.
On the Ohio High School Athletic Association recruiting investigation (concerning former Coach Joe Palka)
That’s outta my control. I don’t even know, none of us even know what in the world’s going on with that. There’s not ever been a conclusion to it … so I don’t know, but that’s something that’s not in my control, that is a higher pay grade than mine. I’m managing our football team, and people can say whatever they want, we’ve done things the right way here. We continue to do things the right way, and obviously you see that our kids may not be the most talented kids but they compete at an extremely high level. They’re well-coached, and they love, they live and breathe Whitmer football.
On being ranked 12th in the nation by USA Today and 13th nationally by ESPN
Didn’t even know it. Didn’t care. Don’t care. The idea is you stay humble, you stay focused, you stay hungry. You do those three things, you don’t worry about anything else. You don’t worry about the media, you don’t worry about rankings or anything like that. As soon as you start to worry about rankings and where you stand in the media and what people are saying about you, is the minute that you stumble. And my job was to keep us focused on the task at hand. We had one objective. We fell short of our objective. We got there, but we fell short of our objective. My job was to keep them focused, and keep them hungry, and keep them grounded and humble.
On why they didn’t win
We got there, and the disappointing piece is that we just didn’t live by our motto, we didn’t finish. And I’m just trying to reflect and trying to figure out what could’ve been different? I haven’t figured that out yet. I can’t watch the tape. I can’t bring myself to watch it. And I will probably never watch that game. I told some of the kids that I let ‘em down, and I still kind of feel that way, because we came up short, I’m the leader. And we came up short and I have to figure out why. I’m not guy that cries or gets real emotional, but I kind of lost it a little bit with my wife after the game, because my heart went out to these kids because they poured their heart and soul into this, and we came up short. When you really peel off the layers you find out how much we care, and how much this loss hurts.
On this team’s place in Whitmer football history
They may not have been the most talented, but they were the best team to ever walk out of here, this is the best senior class to ever walk out of here. No doubt about it. Their legacy will go down forever and people will remember them. And five years from now when they’re eligible they’ll be going in the Whitmer Hall of Fame. No doubt about it. They’ve gotten farther than any other team, ever … our quest started in 1979. 33 years we’ve been trying to reach the state title game, and we got there. So there’s no doubt that they solidified their legacy.
