By Joe Scalzo

scalzo@vindy.com

YOUNGSToWN

When former Ursuline High football coach Dan Reardon started looking at coaching opportunities in Colorado, he decided he’d rather be an assistant coach in a good situation than a head coach in a bad one.

Fortunately for him, he didn’t have to choose.

“I don’t think I would have taken a head coaching job if I didn’t feel good about the situation or at least have some things in place to be successful,” Reardon said Thursday. “I ended up with a great situation across the board.”

Reardon accepted the head coaching position at Poudre High School in Fort Collins, a 5-A program (equivalent to Ohio’s Division I) with more than 1,600 students. The school has won 19 conference championships since opening in 1964 and has one state title (in 1969) and one state runner-up (1965).

“They’ve had some success in the past and they know what it takes to win,” said Reardon, whose wife, Amanda, will be working at nearby Colorado State University. “There’s a good, solid foundation there.”

Reardon, a Canfield High graduate, went 72-29 in eight seasons with the Irish, advancing to the Division V title game from 2007-10 with wins in the final three.

He also served as an assistant coach under Thom McDaniels at Warren Harding and as a graduate assistant under Jim Tressel at YSU and under Cam Cameron at Indiana. Cameron is now the Baltimore Ravens’ offensive coordinator.

Reardon said he expects Colorado’s 5-A teams to be on par with Ohio’s best, but added the talent thins out in the state’s lower divisions, where rural and mountainous school districts dominate. Overall, Colorado has fewer than half the number of high schools and some schools play either eight-man or six-man football.

Colorado has just 52 schools in 5-A, with roughly half making the playoffs. Each school plays a nine-game schedule, with the top-seeded playoff team playing the lowest seed, regardless of geography. So, a No. 1 seed would play the No. 32 seed, the No. 2 would play No. 31 and so forth.

The non-playoff teams play other non-playoff teams in Week 10, with the state seeding schools with similar records against each other.

“It’s kind of a neat setup and having a higher seed is a bigger benefit than in Ohio,” said Reardon. “Another thing they do differently is that you get rewarded for playing good teams, win or lose. So if you play a team that goes 9-0 and lose, you still get a decent number of points.

“As the former head coach of Ursuline, I really like that.”

The Irish just missed the playoffs this year with a 4-6 record. Four of those losses were to Ohio teams with a combined record of 40-9. All four made the playoffs.

Colorado doesn’t have Ohio’s reputation as a football hotbed and Reardon said he is curious to see how much fan interest the team (and the sport) generates.

“Football is certainly important in the state of Ohio and it’s definitely important in Youngstown, in particular,” he said. “I’m very curious to see the level of play. As for the fan excitement, it’s kind of hard for me to gauge right now.”

Amanda is expecting the couple’s fourth child in mid-May, meaning Reardon almost certainly will need to leave Ursuline before the end of the school year.

When asked if he’d ever return to Youngstown to live, Reardon said, “I don’t know. If you’d asked me a year ago if I’d ever be coaching in Colorado, I’d have said no, yet here I am.

“It’s one of those things where my wife had a good opportunity and decided to jump on it,” Reardon said. “Youngstown is home to us and I don’t think that will ever change, so you never know what will happen. Obviously, if there’s a good opportunity, we’ll always take a look at it.”

And if he could somehow sell the Poudre administration on the merits of taking a fall trip to the Pro Football Hall of Fame?

“Yeah, maybe we’ll come back here and play Ursuline or Mooney at YSU,” he said, chuckling. “We’ll see.”

Of course, after the Broncos’ playoff win over the Steelers two weeks ago, there might be some people who don’t want him back.

“Yeah, I was giving a lot of my friends who are Steelers fans a lot of grief,” he said, laughing. “But I told them, ‘Hey, I’m going to be in Colorado now.’”