New coaches bring expectations to the sideline

Three new coaches will helm sidelines when the 2018 football season begins Aug. 24.

Brian Stephenson takes over at Hawken. Adam Sopkovich is the new boss at West Geauga. Eddie Hall leads Brush.

A common thread of expectation runs between the three men who lead their respective programs into new eras.

Stephenson’s tenure at Hawken follows the 37-year career of Cliff Walton. Walton retired following the 2017 season as The NewsHerald area’s third all-time winningest coach at 236 victories.

The Hawks missed the playoffs the past two seasons. Stephenson’s concern is finding a way back to the postseason, which his current senior class experienced as freshmen.

“How do we intentionally get back to where we were?” Stephenson said. “A lot of it is commitment to each other, commitment to the weight room, commitment to strength and conditioning and understanding the fundamentals of football better.”

Stephenson hails from Lima, where he graduated from Lima High School to play at Yale. He then spent the last nine years as the of fen sive coordinator at Woodberry Forest School in Virginia.

Stephenson’s tenure coincided with an improvement to the Hawks’ weight room, an emphasis upon his arrival. There and on the practice field, he wants to build a culture founded on the acronym RICH — relationships, intelligence, character and humility. An enduring sense of family is how Stephenson hopes to elevate a program that won five games the past two seasons.

“If you love that person (beside you), you’re going to give more of yourself,” Stephenson said. “That’s when you start doing excellent things and that’s the goal, to be excellent.”

Likewise, Sopkovich wants to give his players at West Geauga a fresh start as the Wolverines’ third head coach in three years. Lou Cirino departed for Strongsville after eight strong years. Brian Craemer was hired to replace him last year but was nonrenewed following his first season.

Sopkovich arrives at West Geauga after two seasons running the offense at Normandy. A Parma native, he was previously an assistant at Oberlin College and the head coach at Warrensville Heights. He had opportunities to return to the college ranks but the challenge at West Geauga resonated.

During his high school days, Sopkovich played in a football program that had four different head coaches in four years.

“I just think sometimes, God puts you where he needs you to be,” Sopkovich said. “I had a couple offers to come back to college. I ended up taking this to kind of bring up these guys.”

Since Sopkovich joined the program in the spring, he’s seen significant improvement. More impressive is the desire to become better. He recalls one of the first sessions in the Wolverines’ weight room when he asked a rising senior what he and his teammates needed. “Direction,” the student replied.

“I haven’t stopped running since I got there March 1,” Sopkovich said. “What’s cool is these kids have kept up the pace.”

Hall takes over a Brush program coming off its first playoff appearance since 2013. Hall was previously Lorain’s offensive coordinator, where the Titans made postseason runs in three of the past four years.

Before the Arcs’ ninewin campaign in 2017, head coach Jeff Fink won five games in his first three years with the program. Brush graduated co-Tony Fisher Award winner Godwin Joe and a talented senior class that sent a handful of student-athletes to the collegiate ranks.

Hall aims to avoid a drop-off and maintain last year’s standard.

“We’re hoping to hold that success,” Hall said. “The kids are hungry for it. I don’t know that I’ve been around somewhere where everybody wanted to do something. I think they want it here and that’s a huge part of football, wanting to be successful.”

Sopkovich

Stephenson

Hall