By ED PUSKAS

epuskas@vindy.com

The impending end of Kevin Cylar’s successful, yet rocky two-year run as Liberty High School’s head football coach appears to be a classic he said-they said.

On one side is Cylar, who points out that the Leopards are 17-6 with two Division V playoff appearances and an All-American Conference, National Division championship under his leadership, despite a lack of support from key district officials.

On the other are Liberty Local Schools Superintendent Stan Watson and Liberty High School Principal Rocco Adduci, the men Cylar says did little to back him or his program on and off the field.

“I always knew there was a small faction — a very small faction — of people who didn’t want me to be the football coach at Liberty,” said Cylar, an East High School graduate who had been an assistant at Ursuline, first under Dan Reardon and later under Larry Kempe.

“This is a closed culture,” Cylar said. “When you look around at football coaches here, they’re not supposed to look like me.”

Cylar, 41, is black. Cylar, East’s P.J. Mays, Youngstown Christian's Brian Marrow and Warren Harding’s Steve Arnold are the Mahoning Valley’s only black head football coaches.

When news leaked Thursday morning that Cylar’s job was in jeopardy, an estimated 70 Liberty students — many of them football players — left the high school and walked to the nearby board office in protest.

Five students were suspended after the protest, but Liberty officials would not discuss the disciplinary action.

Watson and Adduci dispute Cylar’s allegations that he was not supported as the Leopards’ coach.

“I think that is without question Kevin’s perception,” Watson said. “From my own personal perception, I have gone beyond [the norm] in trying to support Kevin. I don’t know that there is another employee in the district that I have tried harder to help be successful.

“I know Rocco and other [Liberty] officials have tried to support him, too. I’m sorry that he has that feeling [that we haven’t].”

Adduci agreed.

“We support all our head coaches the same whether it’s Kevin Cylar or our basketball coach or anyone else — they are all supported the same way,” Adduci said. “We encourage our coaches and students and get them the equipment and support they need.”

Adduci was unhappy Cylar implied that Liberty officials did not support him because he’s black.

“I support you as a coach whether you’re black, white or whatever,” Adduci said. “I take extreme offense to him going up to that line.

“We hired him. It was a group of principals that hired him to be our football coach in the first place.”

Cylar said Thursday he never has felt completely comfortable at Liberty, but continued in his role as head football coach and later as a junior high track coach for the sake of the kids on those teams. Cylar also coaches long jumpers on the Leopards’ varsity track team.

Cylar outlined a pattern of what he called “bullying and intimidation” from Watson, beginning in his first season with questions about the assistant coaches he hired and people on the Liberty sideline during games who were not players or coaches.

“At Ursuline, we’d have 15 people on the sideline who weren’t players or coaches and nobody ever said anything,” Cylar said. “There were always people with sideline passes.”

Cylar also said he was criticized for conducting two youth football camps over the summer at which former area players such as Mike Zordich and Dale Peterman were guest instructors.

“I paid for all the fliers out of my own pocket, and I never did find out how much money the camps made because Stan sent someone down to collect the money,” Cylar said.

The coach alleged district officials refused to cut the grass at Leopard Stadium in advance of the camps.

Cylar said he also faced criticism after a Liberty teacher’s cellphone was stolen, allegedly by a football player, and the coach retrieved it. In another case, Cylar said he was blamed for a theft of money from a locker.

“Stan blamed me for a kid getting his money stolen because a gym teacher didn’t lock a door,” Cylar said.

In another incident, Cylar admits being thrown out of the Feb. 13 Liberty-Girard boys basketball game at Girard High School. He said he did nothing to warrant the ejection and blames Girard athletic director Nick Cochran.

“I know Stan was upset with me after the Girard incident and the Darrell Mason incident, too,” Cylar said.

Cylar spoke Tuesday in Mahoning County Common Pleas Court on behalf of Mason, the former Ursuline football star and convicted drug dealer.

“That was the tipping point,” Cylar said. “Stan doesn’t look at Darrell as a person. That’s typical Stan Watson. It’s revealing him.

“That’s been Stan’s pattern from the beginning. He showed me his true colors a long time ago.”

Watson confirmed that he met with Cylar on Thursday and told him it was “very unlikely” he would recommend to the Liberty school board that the coach be rehired for a third season.

Watson declined to specify specific reasons why Cylar would not be brought back.

“There are a number of legitimate reasons I feel that Kevin isn’t the right fit at Liberty,” Watson said. “He could be the right fit at some other place, but he isn’t the right fit at Liberty. I’m not going to get into those specific reasons at this time.”

Watson said the Liberty board has not yet taken up Cylar’s supplemental contract as football coach. That will come later, perhaps at the district’s April 27 board meeting.

Cylar said he suspects he knows how that vote will go.

“[Stan] said, ‘I don’t think you have the board’s support and you don’t have my support,’” Cylar said. “His thing is, he’s doing me a favor by writing me a letter of recommendation and he’s [upset] because I don’t want it.

“He thought he could get rid of me and I would go away quietly.”