PAUL CUSICK

COLUMBIANA — The Crestview football team will have a different look next fall.

Paul Cusick is stepping down after 24 seasons as head coach effective Nov. 17.

“I always felt like the young guy and then somehow became the old guy,” he said.

Cusick had a 178-86 record in his 24 years at Crestview with 11 league titles, 17 state playoff appearances and three regional runners-up.

“He obviously has put us on the map,” Crestview superintendent Dan Hill said.

Cusick will remain as Crestview’s athletic director, so he’ll still be working on Friday nights.

“I’m not ever going to say I’m done, done. But right now I am,” he said. “I’ll still be wondering about the stadium.”

Cusick said he’s been thinking about stepping down as football coach the last couple of years.

“As things wound down, I wanted to make sure it was the right move for me and right move for the program,” he said. “I thought it was a good time to do it for both.

“Towards the end of the year it started to hit me where I started to think about it a little bit more. I think if you start thinking about it, you kind of are.”

The Rebels finished the season with a 4-5 record and was one spot away from a playoff berth.

“Paul informed the football team the week after the last football game that he had the intentions to step down at this time,” Hill said.

“I think the kids were a little bit surprised,” Cusick said. “I don’t think they expected it, just because I’ve been here for so long. That’s just kind of what we’ve got to do.”

He knew it was time.

“I’m not really tired of it,” Cusick said. “It sounds like an old cliche, but you need to spend time with your family. Being a football coach is an astronomical amount of time and energy that you put towards the program. Other people are kind of put to the side. I think it’s time that I make up for lost time.”

How much time does being a football coach take?

“By the time you factor in practice time, and study and film time and breaking time, it’s probably 100 hours a week easy,” Cusick said. “You have to if you’re going to do it right. I’ve never really figured it out per week, but it’s got to be over 100 hours. Every coach goes through that.”

Cusick is a 1987 graduate of Columbiana High School, where he played football.

“I got into coaching football by accident,” he said. “I played baseball at Youngstown State and had gotten injured and was sitting out. One of my best friends (Mike Hartley) was coaching middle school football at Columbiana and Lowell Bacon (who is now Crestview’s defensive coordinator) was the head coach. Mike kept bugging me. I was like, “No way, I’m not coaching.’ It came down to you call me the day before you start and I’ll help if you don’t have anybody.”

That was in 1989.

“I got addicted to it,” Cusick said.”It was fun. It was easy to go back to the place you had always been.”

Cusick went on to be an assistant at Columbiana from 1990-92 before setting out on his own.

“I knew that I had to leave and get out of that comfort zone if I ever wanted to be a head coach,” he said. “I purposely made some moves and left because I knew I needed to find out if I could do it or not.”

He was an assistant at Toronto under Eric Meek, who he knew through college, in 1993, at Leetonia in 1994 and then at Crestview under Paul Hulea in 1995.

“Paul left to go to Poland and I thought I was going to go to Poland with him,” Cusick said. “I ended up getting the head coaching job at Leetonia.”

The Bears went 8-22 in his three seasons as head coach.

“That seems like a whole lifetime ago,” Cusick said. “It was a good learning experience for me. They gave me a great opportunity when I was a young coach.”

Crestview eventually had an opening for a head football coach.

“I knew (then Crestview athletic director Andris Baltputnis) through that year and got to know him really well. When it opened up again, I put in for it and he gave me the opportunity. I’m forever grateful.”

Baltputnis was at home watching Sunday Night Football when Cusick called him in January 1999.

“We talked for awhile and I said to him, ‘Are you sure you want to apply here because the expectations are high?” Baltputnis said. “I’ll never forget his answer, he said, ‘Mr. B, I wouldn’t want to coach anywhere where they weren’t high. Immediately I thought to myself we’ve got our coach.

“I went in on Monday, principal John Gecina and I talked. I told him of my impressions and Paul’s answers to my questions. John said, ‘I agree with you.'”

Cusick’s first year was 1999 and the Rebels pulled into a tie with Lisbon and United for the Tri-County League lead after beating 12th-ranked and unbeaten Lisbon, 28-19, in the ninth week.

“That’s when I said to myself, ‘I am absolutely positive we made the right decision,'” Baltputnis said.

Then the next week, the Rebels lost 31-18 at Columbiana to cost them a share of the league title. That’s how it goes in coaching.

There was a six-year stretch from 2008-13 when the Rebels went 62-11 with six of the losses coming in the playoffs. Those teams had good running quarterbacks who were vital in the offensive scheme.

“That was key,” Cusick said. “Having kids who understood the system, who grew up in the system, that was important. We had a lot of talented kids, there’s no doubt about that.”

Cusick started growing as a coach at Leetonia.

“We threw the ball a lot there,” he said.

Leetonia quarterback Eric Hiscox passed for more than 2,000 yards in one season, which no one did at that time.

“Nobody did, but we couldn’t run the ball either,” Cusick said. “That was fun to experiment with those things. The kids just always seemed to execute it.

“As a coach, it’s a lot of trial and error. You just try to do what’s best for the kids. I think that’s the one thing we’ve always tried to do is not make the kids fit the system, but make the system fit the players.”

When he first came to Crestview, the Rebels were running the Wing-T.

“I remember in 2000, that was our first championship that I experienced as a head coach,” Cusick said. “That was a fun group of guys and didn’t think that going to happen.”

A couple of years later the Rebels switched to the spread offense.

“We went to West Virginia when Rich Rodriguez was down there,” Cusick said. “We got to know their staff real well and made that commitment.”

The rest was history.

“He made it a place people wanted to be on Friday night,” Hill said. “My biggest thing is Paul did it the right way. To this day there were no shortcuts.”

Next coach

The Rebels plan on hiring a new head coach in January. In a strange twist, Cusick will have a say as athletic director.

“We’re going to lean on his expertise as we go through this process of finding our next football coach,” Hill said. “Hopefully, we’ll find someone for the next 24 years like he gave us.”

There may be interest from some of the current assistants.

“I think there are going to be a couple of guys,” Cusick said. “We’ve kind of avoided sitting down as coaches and talking about it. It’s going to be time now to sit down and say, ‘If any of you guys are interested, put in for it.’ We’ll see what happens.”

Hill said the district has not heard from any applicants yet, although the district did not make it public until Wednesday.

“If it takes us a month, two months, we want to make sure we get the proper fit, just like Mr. Baltputnis did when he hired Paul in here,” Hill said. “They went through the process the right way and we’re going to make sure we do the same.”