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Stoops to be in town for YSU, Mooney events
By Joe Scalzo
YOUNGSTOWN
In 1989, a relatively unknown college assistant from Kansas State named Bob Stoops headed back to his hometown to recruit an overachieving lineman named Eric Wolford.
“He was just a hard-nosed, tough player,” said Stoops, a Mooney High graduate who is now the head coach at Oklahoma. “He was a guy who fit our system and how we were developing things at Kansas State.
“He had an excellent work ethic, he was tough and competitive in how he played and we figured he would overachieve and do well. That’s exactly what he did.”
Two decades later, Stoops will serve as the featured speaker at the Feb. 19 Bob Dove Coaching Clinic at Youngstown State, where Wolford is now the head coach. One night later, Stoops will appear at Cardinal Mooney’s Athletic Hall of Fame dinner, which will support the scholarship fund named after his late father, Ron.
“I’m very proud of the scholarship fund,” Stoops said. “It helps some needy students get the opportunity to attend Mooney.
“I had a great experience at Mooney and I’m thankful for all that it did for me and my family and so many other people.”
Twelve former Mooney athletes will be inducted into the school’s hall of fame that night. Stoops is a 1996 hall of fame inductee.
“The people there do an amazing job,” he said of Mooney. “There are so many excellent alumni and they’ve got such a great track record and history of success in so many ways. And they do a great job developing kids spiritually.
“I’m proud to be heading back to help contribute to it.”
For YSU’s clinic, Stoops will join the Penguin coaching staff as well as former Texas Tech coach Mike Leach. Stoops’ older brother, Ron, is a defensive backs coach at YSU, while Penguin tight ends coach Andre Coleman played at Kansas State while Stoops was the school’s defensive coordinator.
“There’s a good number of guys I know, so I’m excited to assist them to some degree,” Stoops said. “More than anything, it’s fun to see people you have a relationship with.
“I’m not much on talking about football outside of the season. I get enough of that here. But it’s fun and exciting to spend time with coaches and friends.”
At the clinic, Stoops plans to talk about his team’s philosophies and give insight into the team’s 3-4 defense packages. In his 12 seasons as OU’s head coach, he has gone 129-31 while guiding the program to a national title in 2000. Last season, the Sooners won the Big 12 title and defeated Connecticut in the Fiesta Bowl.
He’s expecting another big year next fall.
“We had a very young team this year and we were fortunate to win another Big 12 title,” he said. “We hope to build on that.
“We have a chance to be much improved, more experienced and an overall better team. We’ve got a lot of work to do to get that done but there’s a lot of potential.”
The Sooners will also benefit from another top 10 recruiting class, which it secured Wednesday. Stoops was enjoying the calm after the storm, both figuratively (he’d finished his work on recruiting this year’s class) and literally (the state had been hit by the nation’s ice storm).
“We got dumped on, but we don’t have the equipment to deal with it down here, so we pretty much shut down and wait for it to melt,” he said, chuckling. “But listen, I grew up in the cold and I’m not afraid to come back to it. It’ll be nice to be back in Youngstown.”