Passions beyond coaching: Fish are biting, tee times beckon as Madison grad Lee Owens eases into well-earned retirement

ASHLAND – If it’s hard for Lee Owens to fathom that 45 years as a high school and college football coach have come and gone, imagine how Pete Heimann must feel.

Heimann was head coach at Madison High School when Owens, Class of 1974, played for the Rams.

“He’s just a … I almost said great kid, and now he’s retired,” Heimann, 83, said, laughing, while speaking with the News Journal from his home in Massillon. “You just saw the way he talked to players and parents. He’s just one of those people where you go, boy, I’m sure proud he played for me.”

Owens spent his entire coaching career in Ohio, including the last 19 as head coach at Ashland University, after being weaned on football at Madison.

“I had a real good high school experience, a really good relationship with Pete Heimann and got really close to Tom Ellis (one of Heimann’s assistants),” Owens said. “It was a big reason I went into coaching, no question about it.”

Owens talked with the News Journal about life before and since his December retirement during a 90-minute sit-down interview inside AU’s Troop Center, part of the sprawling Dwight Schar Athletic Complex that ranks among the best on the NCAA Division II level.

Owens reflected on his Hall of Fame-worthy career from a meeting room that overlooks Fred Martinelli Field inside 5,200-seat Jack Miller Stadium, which still appears as new as the day it opened in 2009. Outside, the Eagles practiced on a brilliant September afternoon under his successor and loyal, 28-year assistant Doug Geiser.

“I still think of Lee as one of the guys,” said Heimann, who spent nearly 40 years at Madison as a guidance counselor before retiring to his hometown. “I can’t imagine he’s got all those years of coaching behind him and now he’s retired. The years go by … holy cow! I’m thinking, he can’t possibly be that old.”

Owens’ boyish looks belie his age, 67, and mask that he has been around so long he has forgotten more football than most will ever know.

“I never remember talking to him about (being a coach), but there were certainly thoughts that he would be great with kids,” Heimann said. “He just showed that kind of potential, just the way he went about things. He was very particular about making sure he was doing what he ought to be doing.”

Heimann believes one of the reasons he took to Owens the way he did is that Owens was an offensive guard and defensive nose guard, the same positions Heimann played for Massillon.

It was strictly coincidence that Massillon was one of Owens’ landing spots as a head coach, but no one was happier to see him get one of the premier high school jobs in the country in 1988 than Heimann.

“My first thought when I heard he was hired was, I’m not surprised,” Heimann said. “There was a picture in one of the papers, I think when he came to Massillon, that showed him as a player with his helmet on. I thought, God, that is Lee Owens. It looked like he came out of a mud puddle. His helmet was muddy; there was mud on his face. It didn’t matter to him. He just went after his job like that’s what he wanted to do.”

Always left programs in better shape

In his first stop as a head coach, Owens led Crestview to a 10-0 season in 1982. Three years later he piloted Galion to a state championship, with the Tigers beating heavily favored Youngstown Mooney 6-0 in Ohio Stadium to cap a 14-0 season. It remains the only state title produced by a north central Ohio school in the playoff era.

At the college level, Owens inherited an Akron program that had posted only two winning seasons in nine years under former Notre Dame coach Gerry Faust and had lost seven straight to archrival Kent State.

In nine years at Akron, a notoriously tough place to succeed, Owens went 7-2 against Kent, won the Mid-American Conference East Division in 2000 and enjoyed three winning seasons in his last five, including a 7-5 finish just before being reassigned to a public relations post on campus by a new athletic director – the fourth AD in Owens’ tenure there.

In the 19 years since, Akron has had three winning seasons combined and two of those were in successor J.D. Brookhart’s first two years – with Owens’ players.

Owens hadn’t even moved into the PR office on campus before Ashland University came calling. The timing was fortuitous for him and for an AU program coming off two bad seasons.

Over the next 19 years, Owens would lead the Eagles to a 137-61 record, four conference championships, six NCAA Division II playoff appearances and the school’s first three playoff victories. In 2022, his last hurrah, AU won the Great Midwest Athletic Conference and went 11-2, including a first round playoff win.

But for all that he achieved as a head coach at Ashland and Akron and Galion and Crestview and in his one year at Lancaster, Owens says his favorite job was his four-year stint in Pete Heimann’s hometown.

Hired away from Lancaster, Owens went 35-13 at Massillon and made the playoffs three times in those four years, including state semifinal appearances in 1989 and 1991.

“More important, we had three wins against (archrival Canton) McKinley,” Owens said. “And (Massillon) had lost seven in a row (in the rivalry) when I went in there. (McKinley’s) Thom McDaniels (father of Oakland Raiders’ head coach Josh McDaniels) is a heckuva football coach. He was big-time before I got there and big-time after I left (being named 1997 USA Today High School Coach of the Year).

“But there was a four-year period of time – and one of his sons was quarterback, so it wasn’t like they were down – where we beat them three out of four.

“I was hired to win that game. There was no question about it. I was told that. I was reminded every day. I was hired for one reason and one reason only, and we won that first one 10-7 in overtime, after a seven-year losing streak and with a levy on the ballot to build a new high school.”

When Owens is inducted into the Ohio High School Football Coaches Association Hall of Fame next year the OHSFCA insisted that despite his perfect season at Crestview and state title at Galion he be enshrined as a Massillon Tiger. And he gets it.

“It doesn’t surprise me,” Owens said. “It’s just the nature of that position, of being that coach, of having the opportunity to coach at that school. It’s so unique. You could never go anywhere to coach where it’s more important to win than it is to the people of Massillon or where they give you more resources to win.

“The expectations are out of this world, but everybody wants to do something they feel is important and significant. And you know in that community it’s really important. Some of those people are my long-time best friends.”

Keeping busy in retirement

Speaking of long-time friends, Heimann would occasionally bump into Owens at Lake Erie, where he docks a boat. Owens will now have more time for two of his favorite pastimes – fishing and hunting. For the first time, he and his wife of 49 years, Dianne, spent January, February and March living on the boat in Clearwater, Florida. They also have a cabin on 200 acres in Navarre, complete with pond, where Owens hunts deer and turkey.

“I could never be a bow hunter or a perch fisherman in the fall because I was coaching,” he said. “I could never take my boat and deep sea fish like I did this past winter. We were 15 miles from the Gulf of Mexico, deep sea fishing, just Dianne and I. She loves to fish; she loves being on the water.

“I haul the boat back and forth. It’s a 400 (horsepower) boat with outboard engines. It’s the biggest boat you can haul. I’ve always had that plan because I love to fish and I don’t want to be locked into one place in Florida. We’ll hit different marinas. We’re boat people.”

Retirement also affords Owens more time to spend with family. He and Dianne have four children and 11 grandchildren. Their daughters, Molly and Leanne, live close by and their, son, Andy, the head football coach at North Union High School, is only about 90 minutes away in Marysville.

Molly is married to Rob Mahaney, the head football coach at Shelby High School, where they are both teachers. Leanne is a professor at Kent State and lives on a dairy farm in Savannah, outside of Ashland, with her family.

Ben, the other sibling, is a business leader in Chicago, whose son by the same name is a senior captain on his high school team. Owens is excited about having the chance to see him play, and don’t be surprised if you see him in the stands rooting on the Shelby Whippets. He was attending Shelby games even while he was coaching at AU.

“I just told him over Labor Day, if you ever want an offensive analyst job, just let me know,” said Mahaney, who has known his father-in-law since he and Molly began dating in eighth grade 19 years ago. “When I was (head coach) at Mapleton, he gave me a lot of his Galion tape, the run-and-boot stuff, and we ran counter a lot. We evolved away from that because of personnel but it was awesome to be able to talk to him, look through all that (tape) and have him as a resource.”

Mahaney was a student assistant on Owens’ staff at AU when the Eagles won the first playoff game in school history in 2008 and spent a couple years in that position before accepting the offensive coordinator job at Mapleton while he was still a college student.

“I was a young guy who wanted to be a coach, so to have that (connection) with him was so surreal,” Mahaney said. “I never wanted to take advantage of it or be a nuisance, but he was awesome, always willing to talk or help and give me advice, even life advice.

“We don’t talk a lot of Xs and Os. It’s more about (team) culture and things like that.”

Owens always won the press conference, so it makes perfect sense that he is in high demand on the corporate speaking circuit. His addresses focus on building success in athletics and business.

He helped build something great

How’s this for building success? As a high school head coach he was 89-32-2 (72.36 winning percentage) and, overall, over 39 years as a head coach at the prep and college level he was 266-154-2 (63.3 percent). As one example of how respected he was by his peers, Owens spent 2016 as president of the American Football Coaches Association.

“Where I struggled in staying in (coaching), from a competitive standpoint, is that the losses just ate me up,” Owens said. “We were 11-2 last year and I can’t remember any of the wins … and there were some great ones.

“Those two losses, I couldn’t let go of. They absolutely ate me up. That part of it was the biggest reason (for retiring). The losses just got tougher and tougher. It just wasn’t healthy.

“Coaching wasn’t my identity, but I’ve always been such a competitor. I can’t stand losing and it just became harder and harder to lose, maybe because expectations became higher.

“We were always in the process of building, and it got to the point where we were built. We were just expected to win.”

When Owens arrived at AU, the Eagles were still playing at the high school stadium in town – try selling that to recruits – and the roster typically topped out at 85 to 90 players. By the time he retired, the school’s $16 million athletic complex had added the $10 million Niss Athletic Center, a 125,000 square foot indoor facility, featuring an 80-yard turf field surrounded by a 300-meter, six-lane track.

And the roster approaches nearly 200 players (there is no limit at the DII level), with AU divvying up its scholarship allotment among them.

Owens thought about retirement a few years ago, but stayed on to help steer the program through COVID, to see the indoor facility to completion and to be there last season for sixth-year senior quarterback Austin Brenner coming off an injury.

While Owens was being interviewed for this story, Geiser popped into the room to say hello. A Wooster Triway and Cornell grad, Geiser started coaching on Owens’ staff at Akron as a graduate assistant in 1995 and stayed with him until becoming his successor at AU.

“I almost called you the first day of camp,” Geiser told Owens. “Not that I never had an appreciation for how good you were, but even more so now. There’s that phrase, until you’re in that position, there’s something you won’t know until you’re in it. I knew that and believed it, after the first day.

“ I learned, even leading up to it, there’s no such time as your time anymore. You’re always on call, just to make sure things are going right.”

Looking back on it now, some of those busiest times, like the first day of camp, are what Owens misses most.

“I was talking to the equipment manager. He called me about something and that’s when it hit me,” he said. “There’s nothing more special than that first day of camp. That opening vision you share with the team, meeting the players for the first time, having them introduce themselves to each other. I’d plan that opening meeting out. I’ve still got the agenda of every opening meeting I’ve had as a football coach at every school I’ve coached at.

“You get one chance at a first meeting and you want to have a good first impression.”

Not being in front of the team for the first day of this year’s camp and or on the sidelines on the Thursday night when the Eagles opened the season have been the roughest aspects of retirement for Owens.

“That whole day (of the first game) I was in a little bit of a funk,” he said. “I sat there with my phone and watched every play. I just couldn’t take my eyes off of every play. I was watching my guys. They’re not my guys, but it was like I was watching my guys. I really hurt for Doug and the guys afterwards.

“Those are the only two times I’ve had a time to chance to reflect back,” Owens said. “I knew there would be a transition, but without question I did the right thing and it was the right time. I haven’t second-guessed (retirement) at all.”

Geiser’s No. 12 Eagles battled well before losing on the road at No. 16 Indiana University of Pennsylvania 24-17, in an opener that was decided in the final two minutes. And they were up 28-17 late in the third period of their home opener before falling to two-time defending national champion and No. 1-ranked Ferris State 38-28.

Last week, AU began defense of its Great Midwest crown by pulling away to beat Hillsdale 38-14. The Eagles have been picked to repeat as conference champs in a coaches poll.

As much as he wants his old team to do well, Owens is making sure he gives Geiser and the Eagles their space. This sit-down was only the third time he’s been back on campus in eight months. He showed up once to pick up mail and another time to watch the spring game.

Owens also had the Eagles’ best interests in mind last year when he decided before the season to retire but delayed telling the team until after the season. He didn’t want his retirement to become a distraction or the season to become a “victory lap.”

“It can’t be about the coach,” he said. “It always has to be about the players.”

Earning respect at Ohio State

Owens’ transition into retirement has been a snap compared to his foray into college coaching. He had been a high school head coach at four schools, spanning 11 years, when John Cooper hired him away from Massillon to be part of his staff at Ohio State.

Owens was with the Buckeyes from 1992 through 1994.

“It was a bigger adjustment than I’m going through now,” he said. “First of all, I had never been a college coach and my experience as a college player (at Bluffton) was only a season. So I didn’t really have a tremendous college experience and didn’t understand it. I was a high school coach, period.“I remember the first Friday night and I’m in the hotel with the (Buckeyes). I had this big hole in my gut. I should be at a high school game. The adjustment was I wanted to be a head coach. I wanted to be the guy responsible for our fate, our success, and making the decisions. I was not very good at being an assistant. I didn’t do it very long in high school – three years.

“I wanted to be the guy in charge. I knew right away I wanted to have control over our destiny. I wanted to be the guy in control of where we ended up. As an assistant you do your part, but it’s usually the guy at the top making the decisions.”

But to become a college head coach, Owens knew that being an assistant at Ohio State would make that path easier.

“I wasn’t really respected by the other guys on that staff,” he said. “(Cooper) had a bunch of guys who had been coaching college for a long time. They couldn’t figure out why I was hired and didn’t think I deserved to be there.

“But I knew right away what I could do to make my mark was be the best recruiter on the staff. You could look at the guys I recruited (like college and pro Hall of Fame tackle Orlando Pace) and got after and it earned the respect of the other guys on the staff in a hurry.

“So I knew when I had a chance to be a head coach again, particularly at the Division I level, I was going to go for it.”

Akron and Ohio University offered him that chance, and Owens chose Akron. By the time he left there for Ashland, he had been at the Division I level for 12 straight years. So it was understandable to assume he was going to use Ashland as a springboard back to that higher level.

Even he was thinking that way after his first home game with the Eagles, which happened to feature a Lee Owens bobblehead giveaway.

“Even though we won over St. Joe (of Indiana), there was no bus to take us (from Sarver Field, the practice site where the Eagles dressed, to the stadium a mile away),” Owens said. “I said, guys, we’re going to march there. It started pouring on the way. There was nowhere to change at the stadium so we played the entire game in those wet uniforms.

“After the game I walked up to the press box to be interviewed. I did the interview, went back down, and everybody was gone. I’m walking down the street, bobbleheads rolling all over the place. I’m soaked. It was surreal.”

Owens vowed that he would not stay at AU without an on-campus stadium.

“I did nine years at Akron, with no stadium on campus,” he said. “I was not going to go through another Akron situation. When (AU) made the commitment (to a new stadium), I really got sucked in. That’s when I knew I could be here a long time.

“With those resources, I didn’t have any excuses. And then things took off.”

‘Greatest honor’ yet to come

We probably shouldn’t look for Owens to come out of retirement. This is his chance to live life as an outdoorsman to the hilt. Along with a steady stream of speaking engagements and a couple of other irons in the fire, there hasn’t been a lot of time to sit in a rocking chair or make out a bucket list.

But since he was asked …

“I’ve played (golf) at Firestone and Pebble Creek. If I could play Augusta (site of the Masters) and St. Andrews (site of 30 British Opens), that would be awesome,” he said.

He’d also like to bag an Ohio trophy buck with a bow and reel in a marlin while deep sea fishing.

“There are so many things I’m passionate about doing, just as I’m passionate about football,” Owens said. “But if I have a bad day of golf or don’t catch my limit on the boat, it’s not like losing in front of 5,000 people.”

One of his greatest personal achievements comes in 2024 when he is enshrined in the Ohio High School Football Coaches Hall of Fame. It was Mahaney who nominated him for the honor.

“I tell this to everybody, and I shared this at a clinic. To me, the greatest honor you can get is being part of the Ohio High School Football Coaches because I’m a firm believer that no one has a greater impact on the lives of young men than high school football coaches,” Owens said. “And there are very few states that do it as well as Ohio.

“I grew up as an Ohio coach from the smallest school in the state (Waynesfield-Goshen, as an assistant out of college in 1977) to the Massillons of the world. I’ve experienced all these leaders of football and know what a great job these coaches do.

“I know so many coaches in that (HOF), competed against them, recruited their players, watched them as a young coach.”

And now Owens becomes one of them, while also leaving a tremendous legacy at a small university just 10 miles from where his high school coach had a positive influence on him.

Where’d the time go Pete Heimann?

This article originally appeared on Mansfield News Journal: Passions beyond coaching: Fish are biting, tee times beckon as Madison grad Lee Owens eases into well-earned retirement