Posts Tagged ‘Ron Strollo’

Youngstown State Football Coach Jon Heacock formally resigned his head coaching position on Sunday, just 24 hours after a terrific road win that sealed a winning season.  To say that Heacock just did not care would be the furthest thing from the truth. 

Heacock came on board in 1992 as the defensive coordinator for Jim Tressel.  When Tressel left Youngstown State to accept the Ohio State University job in 2000, Heacock was selected to be the new head coach of the Penguins.  The switch would ultimately draw constant comparison to the Tressel days, a record nobody would have an easy time duplicating.

Tressel made the Division I-AA playoffs 10 times in 15 seasons while at Youngstown State.  He also won the big prize, a national championship, four times in those 10 appearances.  Heacock only got into the playoffs in 2006, and leaves YSU with a 60-44 record.

   

“I’ve known Jon since my senior year on the football team in 1991, and he has always been a genuine, caring person for the Youngstown State program and the community,” said Ron Strollo, Executive Director of Intercollegiate Athletics.  “I would want Jon, as well as our fans and supporters, to know that we appreciate the tremendous challenges and expectation of being the Head Football Coach at Youngstown State.  He fulfilled those duties in a manner that would make every Penguin fan proud.  Our best wishes and gratitude are extended to Jon and his family for their many sacrifices on behalf of this institution.”

Heacock, the conference coach of the year in 2005 and 2006, will have success somewhere else.  Look for him to accept a defensive coordinator position at a different school for next season, perhaps a major Division I program in the Midwest.

The thing that made Heacock genuine to so many was his very strong moral and faith based attitude.  His players are proof that ‘buying in’ to what Heacock was teaching was never hard or abrasive.  Senior Brian Mellott even commented in a recent interview, “To see some of the people who came here until the time they left was quite a transition.  I am not badmouthing anyone, but you should have seen some of these guys when they first got here.  Their behavior and attitude were transformed into respectability, and that is a testament to him [Heacock].”

Sometimes a move like this benefits both parties.  It marks a fresh start for the institution as well as the people seperated from it.  Hopefully, Heacock can prosper from this seemingly mutual divorce and succeed at some capacity wherever it is that he lands.  Also, Youngstown State, suddenly a school in transition, can select the best replacement as the last bolts of the Jim Tressel era come off of the machine, or are they?

The title Sports Information Director almost sounds like a gift job, one that a smart laborer might be able to handle.  I never knew how many things were involved in such a job until I sat down with Trevor Parks.  Parks has been at YSU for 9+ years and seems to get better at what he is doing instead of riding on the wave of things he has done.  Parks grew up in Nebraska and still likes to talk about the times he had attending Cornhusker Football games.  I recently talked with Parks about the job, the area, and the future in a very in-depth interview that revealed the best and worst of times he has endured during his tenure.

Paneech: How did you first become involved with Youngstown State?

Parks: In July of 2000, I had the opportunity to interview here.  I came in and met with Ron Strollo, Dan O’Connell and Rick Love.  They showed me around and I liked the campus alot.  They liked me, Coach Tressel liked me, and I knew the history of the program a little, but not fully until I walked through the doors.  I liked everyone here and coach called and offered me the job in August of 2000, and I have been here ever since. 

Paneech: Talk about the duties of a sports information director.

Parks: We handle the athletic department’s website which is a variety of information including press releases, game recaps, and select feature stories.  We handle statistics at all home sporting events, coordinate interviews with media to talk with selected student-athletes and coaches, and create media guides for various sports.  It’s sports information whether it is local, regional, or national to get the word out on what is going on here at YSU.

Paneech:  How much contact do you keep with other SID’s at other colleges?

Parks: Probably not as much as I think all of us would like to just because of our daily schedules.  Our organization is called CoSIDA, which is over 1500 people in our profession.  I have teleconferences with that group where we share our challenges and what we do.  E-Mail has changed things a ton.  I still try to call the SID that we play the week of a game just to touch base and say hi, but 90% of the contact I end up having is through e-mail, which is both good and bad.

Paneech: How often do you talk with Coach Heacock and does any of your work involve him?

Parks: Anywhere from five to ten times a day.  If I have to talk to him, it’s a good setup because he has to walk by our doors to go to practice so if I need him, I can grab him real quick.  It’s changed alot this year since he took over the Defensive Coordinator position.  Before, I could just walk in the door and tell him, hey I need this or that.  Now, I kind of have to work around things.  You don’t want to walk in on the defensive staff when they are putting a weekly gameplan together.  The good thing about him [Heacock] is that his door is always open for us which has been a real positive in working with him.

Paneech: What was the nicest place that YSU ever visited to play a football game?

Parks: Ohio State was gorgeous.  The good and bad about going to the big schools is that they have so many people there.  Sometimes it is nicer to go to a place like Western Illinois where the press box isn’t very big, but you can get anywhere in two minutes.  At Ohio State, it’s going to take you at least ten minutes to get from the press box to the field if you are lucky.  The nicest place I actually remember was McNeese State.  If we ever had to do a redesign here, I would call them up.  Cal-Poly was different, it was kind of a scaffold with a tarp over it but it was unique because the mountains were right there, it was neat.

Paneech:  What was one of the worst places YSU ever went to play a football game?

Parks: I don’t want to say anything bad about anybody.  One of the most interesting places we went for football was Richmond when we went there for the playoffs.  That was the year we were 9-2, and we have this nice place here.  They were 9-2 and we ended up going there.  Their stadium was on like an old horse track or whatever it used to be.  The press box was fogging up during the game and the weather was miserable and we lost 10-3.  It just made you wonder, why aren’t we hosting this at our place?  They won the National Championship last year, so hats off to them.  Another interesting place was Chicago State because it was in not one of the nicer parts of Chicago so you had to be careful about getting there, and you saw doors with chains on them, the toilet paper there was chained down in the men’s stalls.  Those are probably two of the more interesting places we have been.

Paneech: How big of a transition did you undergo in relocating to Youngstown from Nebraska?

Parks: I was at Chattanooga before I got here.  Going from Lincoln to Chattanooga was a culture shock and a half.  The people there were great.  It was my first time away from home and I’m glad I went there before I got here because I’m not sure what it would have been like to go from Nebraska to here.  I got to spread my wings a little at Chattanooga, but I had to adjust to the weather, and it was just a different vibe.  Coming here was like coming home in alot of ways.  The weather here is the same [as Nebraska weather], you get storms, snow and cold, I already was used to driving in Winter weather.  If I ever get bored I can hop on I-80 West and drive straight for 950 miles to get home.

Paneech: Describe a typical day at work from start to finish.

Parks:  There really isn’t a typical day.  You can write down a thousand things on paper and hope to get as many done as you can.  You never know when somebody is going to call and need something.  If we have a basketball game on a Thursday night, you get here at about nine-o’clock in the morning but your not getting out of here until ten p.m., a thirteen hour ordeal.  In the Summer, you get here at about 8:30 a.m. and you are out of here at five, so it’s not too bad.  You need that energy for the Fall and Winter when there are events scheduled.  We work alot of weekends, so you try to get as much done as you can during the week. 

Paneech:  Tell me about the worst day, a nightmare day, that you have had here.

Parks: There have been a few of those.  One was when I almost quit.  We played Valpo in basketball and it was a great thing, and then Coach Robick freaked out after the game about some stuff, I was at my wit’s end and wrote a letter of resignation up.  I had only been working here for like eight months, so it is now one of those deals that you look back and laugh about.  When Shawn [Coin] died, it was by far one of the worst days here.  I walked in that morning with him, I walked down the hallway and he said he wasn’t feeling good, and two hours later he had a heart attack and shortly after that they said he was gone.  When I was dating my wife, I got a call here from her saying that her father wasn’t doing too well.  That situation was tough because he volunteered here [YSU] for years and was really well-liked.  Everyone was hurting when Shawn died, everyone was hurting when Mr. Strollo died.  (* Shawn Coin was a video coordinator at YSU who was 31 when he suffered a fatal heart-attack.  He died on August 18, 2008.  He and his wife Jennifer were expecting their first child in April of 2009.)

Paneech:  Will Youngstown State ever consider a jump to Division 1-A for football?

Parks: You look at what a school like Boise State has done.  We beat them in 1994 and now they are in the Top-5 of the BCS Schools.  The struggles with finances create problems.  The guys from Western Illinois said our facilities were nicer than Northern Illinois, so we obviously have a nice facility.  You also look at jumping from 63 scholarships you can split up to 85 full-boar scholarships.  I think after seeing football here for 10 years, its pretty darn good, but I think we are where we need to be.  It will be interesting to see what happens next year when a new president comes on and what direction things will go.

One Word Answers

Favorite Magazine:  Hockey News.

Best Stock You Ever Owned:  I’ve never dabbled in the stock market.

Pellini or Stoops:  Pellini.

If You Could Add A Color To YSU’s Red And Black, What Would It Be?  I have always liked teal, but I don’t see how it would work.

Favorite YSU Player of All-Time:  Kyle Smith.

The Indians Should Hire ____ To Run The Team:  Mike Florak.

Golf Club I Hit The Best:  8-iron.

One Word To Describe Donald Jones:  Amazing.

Best CD/Album Ever Made:  Michael Jackson’s Thriller.    Milli Vanilli.

Favorite Non-Sports Activity:  Walking the dog with my wife.

Favorite Holiday: 4th of July.

Howard Stern or Rush Limbaugh:  Neither.