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BEAVER TOWNSHIP - With 332 all-time wins, 11 national championships and eight national coach of the year awards, one might think that everything from recruiting to assembling a staff came easily to Larry Kehres, former University of Mount Union head football coach and director of athletics.
After enjoying success as a quarterback for the Purple Raiders, returning to his alma mater and remaining there his entire coaching and administrative career was a dream come true.
Admittedly, he said he had to learn to be a good coach while finding the right players and coaches when assembling his staff.
"It was a lifelong career for me. I got started at the bottom as a young assistant coach, worked my way up with coach (Ken) Wable until I eventually became a coordinator, becoming athletic director before head football coach," Kehres told the Curbstone Coaches during Monday's weekly luncheon meeting at Avion Banquet Center. "In a way, I kind of hired myself. It was extremely rewarding, and I am glad that I spent my entire career at one place because it could not have been more fulfilling for me."
The formula for his success and blueprint the Raiders enjoyed under his tutelage might not be embraced by other coaches, but it worked for him.
"The quick and short answer to our success is good players and for the most part, once I got a staff together we developed some continuity," Kehres said. "We learned how to get the type of players that we wanted for the style of offense and defense that we were going to play. We stayed together as a staff and while occasionally guys moved on to better opportunities, I was blessed to have good, retired high school coaches and help us.
"I was able to get coaches in their mid-50s who brought invaluable experience to our program and it was a combination of good recruiting, which brought us good young men who were talented student-athletes. That established how we wanted to play offensively and defensively, the styles we wanted and then improvement year in and year out by us as coaches. We also got better as time went on."
While Kehres found the right coaches to complete his staff and the other programs which he oversaw as athletic director, he credited Joe Malmisur, the late YSU athletics head for also pushing the right buttons for the Penguins.
"Joe was a great coach and administrator and was he capable of selecting good coaches? You're darn right," Kehres said. "I took pride in that part of the job as the years went by as athletic director. An opening would occur and I tried as hard as I could to find a good match, the right head coach for that program. I know Joe was an excellent judge of hiring the right coaches and as a great coach himself, he understood things."
Kehres' recruiting formula was quite simple.
"I asked every player if he was willing to work hard. I wanted to watch him answer that question and I would answer that question, too," he noted. "I said, 'I don't know if we are going to work harder than the other team because I don't know what the other teams do but we are going to work hard,' then I would watch his answer. I asked if he was passionate about football and I chose that word carefully. Some started squirming in their seat and while they really liked football, I got a real good read by how they reacted to that question.
"Then, I would frequently say in front of their parents or grandparents, 'Are you a good young man?' Good is a simple word to understand because it's the opposite of bad so are you a good man? I wanted to see the answer to that question. I didn't have all perfect guys but they knew from the day they got recruited on their visit to campus that I expected them to demonstrate good behavior as a campus citizen and during their years in the Mount Union football program."
A Division III program like the Raiders might be handcuffed in terms of scholarships, however, Kehres never saw that as a negative.
"You might not be good enough to get a grant-in-aid at an upper level school but that doesn't mean a young man isn't passionate about football," he said. "They may not have a scholarship, but that doesn't mean they play the game with any less intensity. I always felt my teams were smart, they understood what they were supposed to do and for the most part they gave a great effort trying to do it. We didn't lack for any passion when we took the field, despite the fact they weren't grant-in-aid athletes."
The postseason was anything but easy for him.
"It took me a while to become a good postseason coach," he said. "Initially, I tended to look at teams that had been there as superior teams. Experience taught me that is not the case. It's only about this year, so once I realized that I should approach every game understanding that we have a good chance to win, I became a better coach and my staff became better coaches.
"We had more confidence going into games once we got into our third and fourth try at it. I was getting better and improving as a coach, as was my staff because of some tough playoff losses. We learned a lot about what it took to win as you advanced through those four or five rounds of playoff competition."