School Spotlight: Avon High School (OH

By: William Lamphier

Avon High School – located in Avon, Ohio – plays in division two and is ranked the #21 football team in Ohio (according to MaxPreps). The Eagles are home to some great talents, including current assistant wide recievers coach for the New England Patriots Ross Douglas and current Ohio University kicker Nathanial Vakos, who missed his first PAT attempt in highschool and never missed again, going on to make 260 straight. That feat is a state and national record. This week, I had the honor of talking with Avon Eagle’s head football coach Mike Elder, and got to ask him how he got to be interested in becoming a coach, to what needs to happen to win the state championship for the first time, to overcoming the challenges the team is facing.

Coach Elder first started as a Head Coach with Indian Valley in 2000, followed by Ravenna Southeast in 2001, and then Perry (Lake County) from 2002 to 2006 before becoming Avon’s head coach. But how did he become interested in the first place? After going to the University of Mount Union in Alliance, Ohio as a Business major, he recognized that he wanted to coach in his senior year. “Football had such an impact on my life through high school. Because of football, I went on to college. I was the first person in my family to graduate from college. I had coaches in high school who had great confidence in me when I didn’t really have it. They believed in me…. Football provided me with the self-confidence and the motivation to go onto college and graduate. I had some space left [in my senior year] in my last semester schedule, and I took an education class. It was an observation class, where I could get into classrooms and watched. It was at that time where I knew I wanted to teach and coach. So, I turned down some jobs in business and went back to get my teaching degree [from Cleveland State University]. As I was pursuing it, I was teaching and coaching at Alliance High School, right where Mount Union is. I think my experience with [the Mount Union football staff] is really what put me over the edge. It got me the bug, and I wanted to figure out how to make coaching part of my life.”