Marion Turns Page…Tim Goodwin On Streaks, Reality, And What Comes Next

Currently sitting on the longest winning streak in Ohio high school football history, along with four consecutive state titles (15 overall), Tim Goodwin and the Marion Local Flyers are immersed in a pre-season of retooling, and truth be told…they’re really OK about turning the page.

Maria Stein, OH – Looming construction of the new ‘Marion Square Garden’ basketball facility served as the backdrop for Marion Local High School football workouts this week,  a representative metaphor as Tim Goodwin’s 27th edition of OHSAA football history begins to take shape.

‘Marion Square Garden’?  That’s not official, but a symbolic suggestion based on the previous quarter century of unparalleled success for Marion Local sports, principally football.  15 state titles, 3 runners-up, and an overall OHSAA winning percentage just a tick under 90% (116-13, 89.9%) would suggest…go big, or don’t go at all.

Don’t you think?

So successful have they been that Flyers’ football has been a staple for Press Pros coverage for all but four of their state titles, including both of their four-peats in 2021-’24 and 2011-’14.

Game stories and columns have graced these pages more than any other single high school program since our inception in 2010, and understandably.  If you build it…people will come.  The Flyers are known state-wide.

In fact, for the 2024 school year just ended metrics show that there was actually more readership of Marion Local football outside the county confines of Midwest Athletic Conference than within – Mercer, Darke, Auglaize, Shelby, and Allen counties.  Of particular note, readership in Cuyahoga, Lake, Trumbull, Geauga and Ashtabula counties alone, up where Kirtland High School resides, was up 30% over the previous year.  Kirtland played Coldwater in the Division VI championship final last December.

Tim Goodwin cocks an eyebrow over such metrics, a concession to those with nothing better to do, perhaps, and expresses surprise over the dozens of inquiries we’ve received since the end of the school year to ask about the latest Marion retooling.

“I suppose they had another big running back move in,”  someone wrote recently.

“Does anyone ever graduate from Marion,”  someone else added.

And straight from the horse’s mouth, Goodwin would tell you a week prior to the official start of football camp that 18 seniors graduated from last year’s team – 18 players who in four years never lost a game (64 straight wins) playing for Marion Local.  And that fact alone is his biggest, and most curious concern in preparation for their August 22 opener against South Adams.

“Does every boy at Marion Local play football?”  is an FAQ.  But the question in Goodwin’s mind presently is whether the boys at hand have played enough of the right kind of football.

“In fact, only about half the boys in school play football,”  said Goodwin this week.  “We have 65 on our roster this year, and we have three classes in the high school right now that are very small.  We’ve never had that in twenty seven years, where you miss maybe ten boys per class and maybe three [like Parker Hess and Victor Hoelscher].   So it’s just going to be different for a couple of years.  However, our 7th and 8th grade classes, combined, have 64 boys playing football, and there are some good-looking athletes in that group.  So we’ll be getting some better numbers, shortly.”

Cynics would claim they’ve heard it for years, and somehow it never seems to deter Marion Local.  Who’s going to play quarterback…who’s the tailback…who’s taking the place of Vic Hoelscher…can they go undefeated again?

Peering out from beneath his Marion Local baseball cap, Goodwin does not take the bait, at least not specifically.

“Honestly, at this point we’re so far from being a functional team that it’s really hard for me to guess about what we can be,”  he says.  “I do know that we’ve got a couple of competitive non-league games to begin the year, but in week three we have St. Henry.  And they’re going to be a load.

Their pre-season camps in recent years have been little more than polishing exercises for returning lettermen and second-teamers ready to step in for departed standouts.  But this year there’s a dearth of returning impact players – no Justin Knouff, Parker Hess, Victor Hoelscher, Ethan Heitkamp, etc, and et. al., the meat and potatoes of 64-0 since 2021.

“I mean, we lost everyone,”  Goodwin winces.  “And I haven’t taken the time to look at those first two games yet, but I know St. Henry.”

In twenty six years of coaching – all the wins, all the titles, the win streak, and the playoff winning percentage – Goodwin has never taken anything, the positive or the negative, for granted.  He’s seen it all, the architect of football dominance in Ohio football not seen since the coach Chuck Kyle’s St. Ignatius teams of the 90s, including five straight titles from 1991-1995.  There has always been some degree of retooling.  And throughout his twenty six years of coaching, he’s insisted that the most satisfying part of it is teaching kids how to play the Marion way.  And in 2025 he’s having as much fun as you can have.  He’s doing a lot of teaching.

“Our guys are actually doing a pretty good job of knowing what to do, but they don’t know how to do it,”  he says with a smile.  “That all needs to be fixed, and the key will be how quickly we can do it.  Some teams learn really fast, and those are the fun teams.  Others are not so fast.  So we’ll find soon enough where the jury is on that.”

Naturally, there are questions pertaining to the streak.  How far can it go?  And will it define Marion football, as the old record of 57 straight did for the football legacy of Delphos St. John, who set their record twenty five years ago?

“The thing about the streak is that it’s obviously going to come to an end,”  he assures.  “And the thing that I think about most is…when it happens I don’t want us to give the freakin’ game away.  Somebody had better beat us, because that’s going to be my focus.

“I mean, we’ve been beaten before.  I’ve got forty-some losses.  And in terms of legacy, I think more in terms of the relationships we’ve had with the kids.  But as to the streak, I don’t want to give anything away.”

Some have written to ask how his post-season winning percentage of 89% will rank as part of that legacy.

“As far as the playoff record, there’s a lot of fond memories,”  says Goodwin.  “For a long time I paid attention to it  just because there were years when we didn’t win the MAC, and we weren’t beating Coldwater.  And I thought…we were beating the schools our size in the playoffs, with a lot at stake.  And if you would have told me these numbers twenty five years ago I would have said…no way.  Who does that?  I wouldn’t have believed it.  But having lived it, well, you just want to take the next team and see how good you can make it.

“We’re going to have to win a different way this year, and I know you’ve written about that before.  But it’s going to look different.  We’re already priming that pump with this team – what I think it might look like.”

If they have to run the ball more, without Knouff and Hoelscher, he’s fine with it.  Tim Goodwin loves the running game – smiles at the mention of all the past running backs.

If they have to depend more on their defense, he delights in the mention of last year’s record defensive statistics – ten shutouts, including six in a row.

The only problem is…he doesn’t have last year’s defense.  They graduated, to that one person’s concern.  And lest anyone wonder about graduations at Marion, it’s one of the OHSAA’s highest-ranked members, scholastically, ranked in the top 5%.  And as the school’s principal, that’s a stat that Goodwin places with the highest of priorities.

“There’ll probably be a lot of two-back offense, and we’ll have some play action off our running game,”  he says, predictable without being specific.  “I think we can be physical to get the tough yards when it’s necessary…stronger as the game goes on.  It’s going to be that kind of Marion Local team.  We’ve had them before.

“Defensively, we’ll have a couple of good linebackers who got time last year.

“But it’ll be different, and we’ve had the conversation with the kids.  Some took it as a challenge, and others will take some time.  I mean, they’re going to learn there’s no Victor Hoelscher scoring three touchdowns in four minutes.  That was too easy.  We have some seniors back who haven’t played as much, and that will be key.  They’ll have to step up,  but we’ll get them there.”

For some perspective, Goodwin’s father, Bill, who coached for so many years at Allen East, shared last week that he once had a streak where he lost five games in five years.  “And I thought that was pretty good,”  he laughed.  “I wouldn’t have dreamed about 64 in a row.”

Fast forward to now, and today’s ‘realists’ will be slow to believe the confessions of Goodwin when he emphasizes having just three starters back…when he speaks about the streak, reality, and what comes next.

And if you don’t believe, yourself, at least count it as a compliment, or concession, to history.

Count your blessings you were here to see it.