From rural farm town Maria Stein, football juggernaut Marion Local towers over Ohio
MARIA STEIN, Ohio — It is a loaded question from the start.
What is the first thing Marion Local football coach Tim Goodwin tells an outsider about how the Flyers arguably have become the state’s preeminent program, winning all of their record 13 state championships since 2000 and building a football factory in a village of 1,206 where the high school stadium sits beside a grain elevator?
“It’s a complicated answer because I don’t know that anybody knows exactly,” Goodwin said. “There are definitely components.”
That approximately 90% of the boys in grades 7-9 participate in football plays no small part. The Flyers’ varsity roster numbers 68, more than a quarter of the school’s total enrollment of 260 and rivaling or exceeding teams from much larger schools in central Ohio.
Three assistant coaches have been with Goodwin since he arrived at Marion Local in 1999, and he said that of the school’s 72 freshmen, 10 of them are children of his former pupils, players or both.
His first game at the school, a 28-22 double-overtime win over then-defending Division V champion Versailles on Aug. 27, 1999, ultimately was a sign of things to come in the rural district 100 miles northwest of Columbus and 60 miles north-northwest of Dayton in farm-dominated and mostly Catholic Mercer County. Goodwin, a native of Lafayette in nearby Allen County, was the third coach in four seasons for a program that had made the playoffs only twice, in 1981 and 1993.
“There were definitely pieces here,” he said. “There was talent that just didn’t know how to win.”
Top-ranked statewide in Division VII, Marion Local takes a 38-game winning streak into Friday’s contest at Fort Recovery and is seeking its third consecutive state title, having won Division VI last year and Division VII in 2021. Goodwin’s next win will be his 300th against 48 losses.
Home games are played before a capacity crowd of about 2,200 fans. Most wear Flyers royal blue and bright gold, and several hundred have to stand behind a fence inside Booster Stadium because the bleachers are full.
“When you have a coach who has won 13 state championships in the first 24 years of his career, and (Marion Local) was his first head-coaching job, he may not be the winningest coach in terms of percentage but you have to say he’s the most successful,” said Gary Rasberry, a sports reporter at The Daily Standard in nearby Celina and a 24-year employee of the newspaper. “That’s a run that’s right up there with anybody.”
Building a juggernaut
The Midwest Athletic Conference, to which Marion Local belongs, was considered by many to be the best small-school league in the state by the time Goodwin came to Maria Stein. Delphos St. John’s, Minster, St. Henry and Versailles had combined to win 12 state championships in the decade before his arrival — but a quarter-century later, the Flyers have surpassed all of them.
Cleveland St. Ignatius ranks second with 11 championships. Cincinnati Moeller has nine.
Goodwin played football at the University of Findlay and spent most of the mid-1990s as an assistant coach at Bluffton High School. His father, Bill, was principal and head football coach at Harrod Allen East, and mother Judy was a teacher.
Tim Goodwin has been Marion Local’s principal since 2011. He previously taught math at the school.
Marion Local went 10-4 in Goodwin’s first season, falling to St. John’s 38-8 in a Division VI state semifinal. The Flyers got their revenge a year later, ending the Blue Jays’ state-record 57-game winning streak and three-year run of championships with a 24-20 semifinal win.
“That scene was just mob city,” Goodwin recalled of the celebration.
A week later, Marion Local routed longtime power Mogadore 54-0 to win title No. 1.
The Flyers repeated in 2001, and won trophies again in 2006, 2007, 2011, 2012, 2013, 2014, 2016, 2017 and 2019. They were state runners-up in 2003, 2015 and 2018.
There are so many banners in the high school’s gym that the top of the north and south walls are full. The 2022 banner, as well as that of the boys track and field team’s state title last spring, hang alone – for now – on the east wall.
Player development starts in seventh grade with the middle school team, because Marion Local does not have youth football.
“We have baseball in the spring and a youth soccer league in the fall. That’s what our kids do,” Goodwin said. “What we do wouldn’t work everywhere. We can take our time with these kids and let them explore football on their own.”
“I think that we pour more time and energy into our younger guys during the season,” he continued, “coach all 68 guys on our roster equally, more than other programs. I’m not sure everyone does that. That absolutely pays dividends.”
Inside linebackers coach Dan Koenig, who also is the school’s athletic director, has been with Goodwin for his entire tenure, as have defensive line coach Greg Bruns and defensive backs coach Kevin Otte.
Otte’s son, Kyle, is a senior running back, wide receiver and cornerback who has been sidelined most of the season because of a torn lateral and medial meniscus in his left leg. Hoping to return next week against Minster, Otte said he has watched film of his father, four uncles and older brother Peyton from their playing days dating to the 1980s.
“I was a little young (to remember much), but they were electric and made plays,” Kyle said. “Especially watching my brother when I was a sophomore and he was a senior, I played some with him, but it was nice to see what he did on the field and the impact he made.
“We work hard to get to the places they were and we want to go. Guys see that and they want to be part of this.”
The Flyers have enjoyed six undefeated seasons under Goodwin and just one sub-.500 campaign, in 2004 when they went 4-6.
Leader of the pack
Coaches, fans and players all credit competition within the MAC, whose teams have won 150 championships in all sports, for the league’s dominance.
The area has accounted for 46 state football championships, 41 of which have been won by MAC schools during their time in the conference. Coldwater and Versailles both have seven titles overall, followed by St. Henry and St. John’s with six each.
Minster has won three, including two under current Dublin Coffman coach Geron Stokes in 2014 and 2017. New Bremen won Division VII in 2020 and 2022, and Anna (2019) and Fort Recovery (2015) have one apiece.
Nearby St. Marys Memorial, which competes in the Western Buckeye League with mostly division III and IV schools, won state three times from 1990-93.
Coldwater (6-0), which has won all of its titles since 2005, is ranked second statewide this week in Division V. Versailles (5-1) remained atop Division VI even after a 14-13 loss to Marion Local (6-0) on Sept. 22, and Minster (5-1) is 11th in Division VII.
Perhaps fittingly, Maria Stein sits almost exactly in the center of all of them, geographically speaking.
Minster and New Bremen lie 7 miles east down Ohio 119 and 3 miles from each other. St. Henry is the same distance west on 119, and 5 miles south of Coldwater.
Versailles is a 14-mile drive almost due south, with just a few jogs and turns.
Drive out of one of these small towns and you soon see another, thanks to largely flat terrain and open farmland. If the next town isn’t visible, the steeples of one of Mercer County’s 10 Catholic churches probably are.
They sit among 1,231 farms in the county, according to the U.S. Department of Agriculture. Of those, 191 are dairy farms, per USFarmData.com, the second most of any county in the state behind Wayne’s 292.
“It’s kind of a throwback area with traditional values in terms of hard work,” Goodwin said. “Education is important, therefore the school is very much respected. We have a big agricultural influence traditionally. It’s changing as the agricultural scene changes, but there have been a lot of dairy farmers in our area for over 100 years and those people have to work extremely hard. That mindset has been passed down.”
Reveling in success, working for more
Gameday can’t start early enough in Maria Stein.
Many students of all ages, and their teachers, are decked out in royal blue and bright gold on Fridays. One Versailles fan arrived as early as 3:45 p.m. for the Sept. 22 game, 85 minutes before the team bus rolled in, to set down blankets in the visiting stands and save seats.
By 4:30, a few dozen fans were beginning their pre-game dinners across 119 at the Korner Kafe, where the menu pages are lined in blue and gold and feature the Marion Local logo.
Saving seats is not an issue, or a luxury, on the Marion Local side. All seating is reserved, and students and the band sit beyond the south end zone.
That is a lesson Tim Goodwin’s cousin, Vaughn, learned a few years ago when he and his wife came to a game and had trouble finding a seat. Now, their spots are in the top row, and they were the first to take their seats Sept. 22.
“It’s awesome coming to watch Tim coach,” Vaughn said. “The family is so proud. I enjoy just being here, watching the kids play and Tim coach. It’s a lot of fun.”
Dan Romick travels more than 100 miles from his home in Marblehead, on Lake Erie, for Flyers home games. Romick, who was a member of Cory-Rawson’s 1968 Class A state title team, has been attending MAC games for more than 50 years.
“It’s just good football, the best football in the state of Ohio,” Romick said. “They know hard work. It’s what it’s supposed to be.”
The Flyers and Versailles played to a 7-all halftime tie, and Marion Local took the lead for good on fullback Ethan Heitkamp’s 5-yard touchdown run early in the third quarter. Versailles pulled to within 14-13 with 2:06 left on Michael Osborne’s 20-yard touchdown pass to Nicholas Meyer, but the extra point went wide right and Marion Local ran out the clock.
In between, the 50/50 jackpot was announced — with the winner taking home $6,380. The jackpot was a result of both a standing-room-only crowd and advance sales.
“How many places do you see 50/50 tickets being sold the night before?” asked Jenny Dippold, a guidance counselor at Marion Local who had two sons win state titles at Coldwater. “It’s neat to see the community rally around all aspects of school, not just academically but with sports.”
That is not lost on Flyers players, including junior quarterback Justin Knouff, a first-year starter who ran for 106 yards and a touchdown and passed for 70 yards against Versailles.
“Football for Marion is so big,” Knouff said. “Everyone likes to come out and support. They do an awesome job supporting. We have to play well for them.”
This article originally appeared on The Columbus Dispatch: How did Marion Local become Ohio's high school football juggernaut?
