Quakers rebound; Phillips excels

The two boys revenue sports at Salem High combined for two wins last year.
Think about that.
The football team went 1-9 and the basketball team went 1-20 -- which wouldn't have been quite as bad had the basketball team not ended the season on an 18-game losing streak.
No, wait, it would have been just as bad.
I don't mention this to knock the Quakers. It was a down period. Every school has them. Every school bounces back.
The Quakers have one of the area's deepest football traditions. They've been playing football since 1893. Former Ohio State coach Earle Bruce once coached the Quakers.
Salem is sports-crazy town, but last season probably just drove them plain crazy.
Which is why last Friday's win over Poland was so special. The Quakers had not won a Metro Athletic Conference title since beating Howland in 1998, a span of 22 games.
"It should have happened a lot earlier," Salem coach Doug Phillips said.
One title
Salem won its first -- and only -- MAC title in 1994, the league's first year. Over the next seven seasons, the Quakers went 7-33 in the league and 19-51 overall.
Enter Doug Phillips.
Phillips took the job last year after leading Springfield to the Division IV regional final in 2000. He took over a Salem program that had gone 0-10 for the past two years.
"I knew it was going to be a tough challenge when I came in," Phillips said. "But as an educator, I knew that the kids don't care how much you know until they know how much you care. Once you show them that you care, they'll do anything for you."
After a 1-9 season last year, Phillips has started to turn the program around.
"The thing is, you can tell the kids that they can compete in the MAC as long as you want, but until you taste success, there's always a sense of doubt," Phillips said. "[Last Friday's] win definitely gave this program a leap."
Salem returned 14 starters from last year's team, so there was reason for optimism. But when Phillips took over, he didn't just focus on the varsity. He also goes to junior varsity games, freshman games -- even seventh and eighth grade games.
"I try to hit as many games as I can," he said. "We have kids with a great love for football and we'll be excited when they get to high school.
"The key thing for us is to get our numbers up. We feel like we have the young men here just like Canfield and Poland have the athletes in their program."
So far
The Quakers (3-4, 1-2) have led at halftime in every game this season except one -- a Week 6 loss to Howland.
"A lot of people are saying, 'Geez, you could be 5-2 or 6-1,'" Phillips said. "We've been in a lot of close games, but we had to learn how to win close games. And you learn how to win close games is by being in close games."
Salem lost a couple players to injury before the Poland game and had to reshuffle its offensive line. The Quakers led 12-7 at halftime, but fell behind 15-12 to start the fourth quarter. But unlike past games, they got better in the fourth quarter, outscoring the Bulldogs 22-15 in the final period to clinch the win.
"The thing that I was most proud of is that we faced a lot of adversity and we overcame it," Phillips said. "The fourth quarter has been our nemesis all year, but we scored 22 points going into the driving wind and rain to win the game. That adversity brought our kids closer as a family."
For the second straight week, the Quakers will play one of the league's unbeaten teams. Canfield (7-0, 3-0) visits Reilly Stadium tonight and Salem will try to show their first MAC win was no fluke.
"We definitely want to raise the expectations around here," Phillips said. "We don't just want to compete, we want to win games."
XJoe Scalzo is a sportswriter for The Vindicator. Write him at scalzo@vindy.com.