Enduring bond of coaches helped Express football reach title goal in challenging season

Opening night of the 2023 Elmira Express football season went from excitement to pain to bewilderment. The team's all-state two-way star was lost to injury, lightning cut short the contest after one quarter and the next morning Elmira learned it officially lost the game against Liverpool.

Cut to 11 weeks later and Elmira was one of the final eight Class AA teams standing in New York, with the Express' offense delivering the best showing of any opponent in six postseason games for unbeaten state champion Syracuse Christian Brothers Academy in a 42-20 loss.

As injuries piled in unprecedented fashion and the record fell to 3-5, two men who have spent much of their lives competing and coaching at Elmira fields helped steer this Express train along the obstacle-filled track: head coach Jimmy McCauley and assistant Dave Holleran, with a boost from assistants Jeff Edwards and Dom Clark and the rest of the support staff.

The leadership of McCauley and Holleran was integral to a championship season that seemed unlikely when Elmira stood at 3-5, including three losses of 23 points or more.

"They found a way to get us to keep motivated every day and get us to keep going out and keep giving everything we have in practice and we just keep believing in them," said senior quarterback Evan Garvin, who suffered a concussion early in a regular-season loss to Corning and missed the next game.

"We trust in our coaches. It just made it really easy for us to keep going every day and giving all of our best. ... They're great guys, great coaches and it's been a pleasure to play for them."

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Hills, youth sports and the start of a friendship

McCauley's dad, James, had a management job with Hills department stores, which had a store in Horseheads, that brought the family from Pittsburgh to Elmira when McCauley was in second grade. Through sports, McCauley and Holleran became fast friends despite attending different elementary schools.

They were teammates from youth sports to college and have been coaching together since graduating a semester apart from SUNY Cortland.

As McCauley recalls, he met Holleran playing Southport Recreation basketball or baseball. They were CYO teammates for St. Mary's Southside and Jimmy's dad coached with Holleran's father, Dave Sr., known to many by Willie after his middle name.

Dave Jr. didn't start playing football until seventh grade in keeping with his parents' wishes, with soccer taking up that athletic time instead. McCauley played quarterback on the Southside JV team coached by Edwards. Holleran, a tight end, was among his receiving targets before moving to offensive line.

McCauley was Southside's Male Athlete of the Year as a senior and each was named to the Elmira Star-Gazette's All-Twin Tiers football team as seniors, with McCauley excelling at receiver and quarterback, and the then 6-foot-3, 270-pound Holleran a two-way force on the line.

A season of extremes

Overcoming adversity as athletes helped shape the coaching message that sticking with things through tough times will pay off.

Holleran and McCauley were on a Southside football team that went winless in 2001 before bouncing back to win four games the next year.

"You never want kids to go through the pain of not having a win," Holleran said of that season. "We all stuck together and we had a pretty decent senior year. But it always stings not winning one game."

As seniors, McCauley and Holleran helped Southside rebound from a 1-7 start to the 2002-03 basketball season to win the Section 4 Class AA title and finish with a 10-11 record. It was Southside's first sectional championship in 31 years. Team dinners at the Holleran house, featuring wings from Hi Bar, made a close-knit team grow closer.

But both admit this season was far from ordinary, starting with a preseason scrimmage that got canceled before a list-minute switch to Utica Proctor that did not go well. As for that lightning-game "loss," McCauley said, "We didn't lose, that's the thing," and Holleran said Section 3 didn't count the game in its standings while Section 4 considered it an Elmira defeat based on National Federation of State High School Associations rules.

The Week 1 loss of all-state fullback/defensive end Amir Williams for most of the season, followed by a torn ACL suffered by effective backup Daeshaun Harris three weeks later, played a role in Elmira's transformation from run-oriented team to a more balanced offense, highlighted by a 31-14 win over Corning in the Section 4 final. Wingback Kayon Flint, who starred in the sectional final, also missed much of the season and wasn't at full strength for the state quarterfinal.

Other injuries took their toll. There was a scary moment in which lineman Landon Moore was taken off the field in an ambulance during a defense-led 8-3 victory over Horseheads.

"We’d be sitting in the coaches' room after Week 3, Week 4 and we’re trying to think of ways to keep the team spirit alive," McCauley said. "You want to talk about a season with the high of the highs and the low of the lows.

"Putting it all together, getting hot in the playoffs and beating Corning and winning a sectional championship ... we tell our kids all the time, you win a sectional championship, that’s something nobody will ever take away from you. For the kids to really buy in, stay with us, believe in us, was really a cool feeling."

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Friendship and leadership

The coaching partnership of McCauley and Holleran, both 39, is only a slice of the bond shared not only by them but by their families, who vacation together every summer at Delaware's Dewey Beach and live next to each other.

McCauley and his wife, Stacy, have two children: 12-year-old daughter Avery and 11-year-old son Colton. Holleran and wife, Gigi, are parents to 10-year-old daughter Amelia, who shares her dad's ability to recall the most minute details, a quality McCauley is grateful to have of someone working alongside him.

Both are teachers. McCauley instructs algebra at Elmira High and Holleran teaches eighth-grade social studies at Waverly Middle School.

When asked why their partnership/friendship works, McCauley responded, "It just does."

"Even now when we're a little older, we find ourselves interested in the same things," he said. "The way we raise our kids is pretty dang similar. ... Every once in a while I can be in a place with Dave and I don't have to say anything to him or look at him, we just leave without even talking and I never feel weird about it."

Gains from games

There have been multiple coaching influences along the way.

McCauley described Joe Davis, their varsity football coach in 2001 and 2002, as someone with more football knowledge than several people combined. Davis still checks in regularly with McCauley and Holleran.

Bill Limoncelli, their basketball coach at Southside, drilled into them the idea that practices should be harder than games.

"We would go to practice and he'd put the basketballs away. We took charges for 45 minutes and we got a lot better at it," Holleran recalled. "We tell our kids that all the time. 'Listen, we're going to make practice as hard as it can be, so when it comes time for the game that should be the easier part of your work.' "

They played for Dan MacNeill at Cortland, McCauley two seasons at receiver and Holleran four years on the offensive line, including 2 1/2 as a starter.

"Even in my short amount of time playing at Cortland I remember those guys and now I'm coaching high school football and you go to these clinics and I run into these guys," McCauley said of former Cortland assistants such as Nate Milne and Kory David. Milne is head coach at Muhlenberg, where David is an assistant.

McCauley said there was no conversation with Holleran about attending the same college, but Cortland fit the criteria those two were seeking, as it did for a mutual friend. Cortland's appreciation for athletics added to its appeal.

"I do feel like everybody made their own decision based on their own thoughts, but there's a reason we've been together for a long time," McCauley said. "Our heads work the same. There were things about Cortland we really liked."

McCauley's two seasons included a pivotal block on a game-turning kickoff return in Cortland's 16-15 win over Ithaca in the 2003 Cortaca Jug game. Holleran helped the Red Dragons, this past season's NCAA Division III champion, win three of four meetings against rival Ithaca and go 9-1 during the 2006 regular season, only to get snubbed from the NCAA Tournament.

"I never won an Erie Bell (game against rival Elmira Free Academy), but maybe I can go win a Cortaca Jug," Holleran said of what is widely considered the top rivalry in Division III football.

A coaching partnership

McCauley graduated in May of 2007 with a degree in mathematics adolescence education and was hired immediately at Southside, becoming JV football coach that fall. Holleran, who graduated a semester later, started teaching in March of 2008 at the since-closed Elmira Alternative School and joined McCauley's staff that fall.

They stayed together at Southside until the sports merger in the spring of 2011 with Elmira Free Academy that came just after Mike Johnston Jr. was hired as Southside varsity football coach. Johnston wanted Holleran to coach the line and McCauley hoped to keep him on his staff, a potential conundrum that resolved itself with the sudden merger. McCauley ended up a varsity assistant and Holleran was an assistant for the JV team coached by Dave Perkins.

Johnston, now head coach at Corning, became offensive coordinator for the Express and stayed in that role when McCauley became varsity coach in 2012, with Holleran joining McCauley as an assistant.

The qualities Holleran and McCauley have in common have contributed to longstanding success that runs deeper than wins and losses.

"They really have a good bond and connection with each other," said Garvin, who described his time with Express football as being part of a family. "With them being able to talk to each other and see things on the field and being able to go over film and things like that, it’s really cool to see. It makes you want to be better as a player and watch more film."

Practices are a well-oiled machine by this point.

"We've been coaching forever and we have a schedule, but we usually get done at the same time no matter what," Holleran said. "I'll look over at him, he'll look at me. 'Time to go? Yeah, it's time to go.' The kids are like, how do you guys do it? It's just weird."

Holleran credits McCauley with putting trust in his coaches and not telling them how to do their jobs while at the same time offering help when needed. He said people have no idea how much time McCauley puts into coaching football, which is a nearly year-round responsibility for varsity coaches given strength training and summer sessions.

As for Holleran, McCauley said the first thing that comes to mind is toughness.

"Being a lineman, you have to be a certain type of guy, certain type of person," McCauley said. "He's done it at high school, he's done it at high-level college football and he really gets our guys that play line for us to play at a different level.

"His expectation is not measurable and that's one thing I've always liked about him is your good is never your best. There's never a nice job, there's always a 'We want you to be better than you have.' I like that because that keeps the kids always on that mode of I've got to work a little harder than yesterday, I've got to be a little better than yesterday."

Follow Andrew Legare on Twitter: @SGAndrewLegare. You can also reach him at alegare@gannett.com. To get unlimited access to the latest news, please subscribe or activate your digital account today

This article originally appeared on Elmira Star-Gazette: Elmira football coaches McCauley and Holleran share enduring bond