Hawken coach Walton will retire after 2017 season

Longtime Hawken football coach Cliff Walton will retire from coaching after the 2017 season.

The school announced the move on social media on Aug. 3, writing, “Longtime Hawken Football Coach Cliff Walton has announced that the 2017 season will be his last as the head coach of Hawken’s football team. We could never adequately describe what Cliff has meant to countless students and student-athletes and how he has impacted their lives,

their growth on and off the athletic field, and the invaluable life skills he has taught them.”

Walton enters his final season with 233 victories at Hawken.

He was named 1981 Class A Coach of the Year, 1986 Geauga County Coach of the Year, 2012 Division IV Ohio Co-Coach of the Year, 2012 district Coach of the Year, and CVC Coach of the Year multiple times.

Under Walton’s tutelage, Hawken finished as the 1987 state runner-up, with all-Ohioan O.J. McDuffie as the headline player.

The social media post went on to say of Walton, “Suffice it to say that Cliff Walton himself has always embodied the ‘Attitudes of a Hawk’ and, most importantly, has led our studentathletes in the right direction by his own example.

“He taught them more than how to win at football or wrestling; he taught them how to live lives full of meaning and consequence.”