On Campus
New Waynesburg coach offers invigorating perspective It’s 8 a.m. four days before Waynesburg College’s football home opener. The new head coach is sitting in his office, a room he’s occupied for only three months now. He has no prior coaching experience at the college level and has spent the past seven seasons with a high school team.
His first observation is, of all things, “I’m still learning.”
Whoa, timeout.
It’s not what you think.
Rick Shepas is no ordinary high school-coach-turned-college-head coach. Actually, there aren’t too many of them this side of Gerry Faust coaching Notre Dame for five mediocre seasons in the early 1980s.
What Shepas brings is a fresh perspective different than most college coaches. His regimen is not as overbearing. No 6 a.m. workouts. No sitting through hours of film sessions after spending an entire day in class. He gets to the point.
“The game of football is fundamental,” Shepas said. “It’s going to be fundamental at every level. Other than a few minor rule changes there aren’t too many changes between the white lines.”
Shepas, a shaved-headed, chiseled-faced 40-year-old, is a straight-talker and straight-thinker but still manages to come across very personable and thorough.
He talks to his players, not at them. He listens to them. He greeted a visitor, What’s goin’ on, brother? When he says he is still learning he means learning about his players having spent all but a month coaching them.
“The biggest adjustment is just getting to know the guys,” Shepas said. “What they are capable of doing and putting them in advantageous positions to be successful and just knowing what buttons to push to motivate them.”
Shepas, a former captain for Jim Tressel when the current Ohio State head coach started at Youngstown State, knows very well the demands of coaching at a high level.
The last seven years at Massillon High School-Ohio’s answer to the team depicted in the best-selling book Friday Night Lights-Shepas coached in a community of 30,000 football-frenzied residents to the tune of a 53-28 record including a 12-2 mark in 2001.
Shepas admittedly is now embracing the small-town atmosphere at Waynesburg for his wife and three daughters as well as welcoming the challenge of recruiting and coaching at the college level.
But one reminder of Massillon hangs on his office wall, a photo of the school’s 18,000-seat stadium where its average game attendance swelled to 12,000 in 2000.
It will be a far cry from his first home game at Waynesburg (enrollment 1,530) this Saturday at 1:30 p.m. against Manchester (1-1) where the school will be lucky to attract 1,000 spectators.
When asked what the most striking difference was between game week at Waynesburg and game week at Massillon, Shepas replied undoubtedly, “the (media) hype is a little bit less going into the season.”
Almost two quiet weeks have passed since Waynesburg’s last game when it lost 21-17 at Denison and surrendered three unanswered touchdowns in the second half to a team the Yellow Jackets have outscored 134-14 the previous two years.
“I can’t tell you how sick I was after that game from a personal standpoint,” Shepas lamented, despite later acknowledging that his team is less experienced than recent Waynesburg teams that made postseason appearances the last two years with records of 9-1 and 7-3.
“I want them to realize, whether fortunate or unfortunate, that this is not 2003 or 2004. This is the mark that they will leave on this particular football program.”
As much as Shepas claims he has learned about his teams the first few weeks, nothing compares to what his players are learning from him and from their unfortunate start.
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California (2-0), receiving three votes in this week’s AFCA Division II national poll, will travel to Division I-AA powerhouse Monmouth (1-1) on Saturday. The Vulcans are coming off their largest margin of victory in school history with an 88-12 win at Mansfield last week in which they compiled 757 yards of offense. Five Vulcans scored 13 of their touchdowns including senior running back Antoine Bagwell rushing for two and receiving two, and freshmen reserve back ReMaro Rush rushing for four in the fourth quarter.
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Cal U. will host its only home cross country event of the season at Roadman Park Saturday morning at 10 a.m. The men’s team opened the season on Sept. 10 at Davis & Elkins when freshman Ken King, a Connellsville grad, led the Vulcans with his 15th-place time of 29:13 on the 8,000-meter course.
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The Cal U. women’s volleyball team continues to roll. The Vulcans are now 10-0, their best start under fourth-year coach Melissa Myers. Shanna Yourchik, a junior middle hitter from Jefferson-Morgan, led Cal U. in its last two wins over St. Vincent and Edinboro with 12 and 9 kills, respectively.
The Vulcans host Clarion at 7 p.m. Saturday.
Justin Zackal may be reached online at jzackal@hotmail.com