“Every team has its personality, its strengths and weaknesses. And if you try to piece it together like a puzzle. It’s what I enjoy doing with coaching at this point. Try to get the pieces in the best spot.” – Tim Goodwin (Press Pros Feature Photos)
A year removed from his record winning streak being snapped, his pursuit of a fifth straight title denied, and his legacy for success acknowledged state-wide and nationally, Marion Local’s Tim Goodwin considers what’s left for him to accomplish in coaching.
In the moments following last year’s 24-7 loss to St. Henry in the OHSAA Division VII regional final game, snapping the Marion Local Flyers 76-game win streak and denying them a fifth straight OHSAA title win, Marion coach Tim Goodwin shared this record-breaking admission.
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“They (St. Henry) were the better team tonight. They beat us. In every facet of the game, and especially up front…on both sides of the ball. We couldn’t run the ball tonight, and we couldn’t stop the run. That was pretty much it.”
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Pressed by another reporter for something juicier to write, Goodwin shrugged and turned back the clock to week three of the regular season.
“Look,” he said. “I told you guys that they (St. Henry) were going to be a load this year. We just happened to beat them during the regular season. But they were a different football team tonight.
“The win streak was incredible. And I guess if there’s a bright spot about how it ended it is that there was no doubt tonight. You can’t blame it on a call, or the weather, we just got handled, plain and simple. And that happens.”
Trust me, after as many years writing as Goodwin has coaching, there aren’t that many coaches so forthright as to say after losing the regional final, and the nation’s longest win streak, “We just got handled.”
There was no discernible frustration in his voice. No anger and no sense of denial. Goodwin has always called things as he sees them – has always acknowledged a better effort by an opponent in a losing outcome.
“I know there’s old coaches out there who say they’d rather coach in practice than in the game, itself. Because that’s what’s important to them at that stage of their career. And I’m almost to that point, where you’d rather just go out and practice.”
He doesn’t dwell on bad luck, or karma.
Nor does he dwell on defeat. He prepares accordingly, telling me in the past, “We’ll figure some things out on the bus ride home.”
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He’s a guy who admires hard work, in any application.
He appreciates commitment, loyalty, and above all…preparation.
Where disappointed coaches sometimes play hide-and-seek after a disappointing outcome, Goodwin is front and center.
“You have a job to do, too,” he told me after a state tournament final loss to Kirtland in 2015 (22-20), a game that Marion had in the palm of their hand before a rare turnover on what would have been a clinching touchdown turned the momentum and fate of the game in Kirtland’s favor.
So when I recently asked him about discussing the future – his future in coaching – given his 15 titles in 25 years, an OHSAA tournament winning percentage of 90%, and an overall record winning percentage of 87.2% in 384 games as coach at Marion (his only head coaching experience), he didn’t flinch. “Sure,” he said.
He may have been thinking, “What’s left to talk about?”
He might have been thinking about heightened expectation, and motivation for 2026 after the 76-game win streak was snapped.
But when I mentioned writing about what’s next for Tim Goodwin, after already having achieved the unthinkable, all he said was, “Sure.”
“I can look at things now in a more ‘big picture’ context,” Goodwin admits. “I know that things are being being taught the right way.”
Sure? Think of his career at this point in this context. In his first twenty five years as coach at Marion Local he’s won fifteen state titles, yes. And five other times he’s lost to the team that went on to win the title – Kirtland (twice), Columbus Grove, New Bremen, and St. Henry.
If you’re a writer and you want a football story that absolutely no one else can give you, you call Tim Goodwin. No one’s more capable of the term…been there, done that. It’s what New York Daily News writer Dick Young once said about Yankees manager Casey Stengel as a subject.
“The only better bet than Casey is U.S. Steel,” said Young.
Need more proof? I checked, and I’ve done a column like this with Goodwin in each of the last three years. All different. All thought provoking. And all relevant to the present or the future. The man, without even trying, is just that solid. When E.F. Hutton and Tim Goodwin speak, people listen.
And yet, he’s at that stage of life where the end is easier to see than the past is to remember. He left the classroom fifteen years ago to become the principal at Marion Local – a life and career decision – where he’s respected for his commitment to scholastic success as he is for scoring inside the red zone. Now Tim Goodwin is approaching another crossroad.
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“I’m still enjoying coaching,” he said last fall, repeating what he had already said to me in recent conversations.
“A lot of my assistants have played for me, they’ve gone on to become good coaches in their own right, and I assure you that Adam Bertke knows a lot more about teaching quarterback than I do. So I don’t have to do that anymore.”
Bertke left Marion in 2014 as a recruit to play quarterback at the University of Pittsburgh, before transferring to Findlay in 2017, an example of the type of people with which Goodwin has surrounded himself.
Just yesterday…with family on the occasion of state title #10, in 2017, Ohio Stadium, vs. Cuyahoga Heights
“I can look at things now in a more ‘big picture’ context,” he admits. “I know that things are being being taught the right way.”
His goals for Friday nights have not changed. Play the game and execute. Exercise your advantage. Enjoy the competition.
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This, by the way, is largely what Tim Goodwin says when he’s asked to address the state coaching convention. There’s no such thing as Marion ‘Magic’, or miracles, as I’ve alliterated about in the past. He respects it from a journalistic context, but he ain’t buying it. Not for a minute. You either execute, or you get handled…sometimes.
But he’s executed so much in such a short amount of time, one wonders, really, what’s left for him to accomplish in coaching?
And has he arrived at that intersection…of deciding how his remaining time, at age 54, will be best spent?
“Well,” he says, “…nothing is left to accomplish in terms of stats or records. It’s just that every year is a new year with new kids and a new challenge to teach them. Every team has its personality, its strengths and weaknesses, and you try to piece it together like a puzzle. It’s what I enjoy doing with coaching at this point. Try to get the pieces in the best spot.
“Competitively, I really don’t care about what kind of trophy is waiting at the end, not like in the beginning. But I’m certainly competitive in terms of how good can we be. And I think the other stuff is a result of that competitiveness. How good can we be? And what can we do to be better today? That fire is still there.
“I know there’s old coaches out there who say they’d rather coach in practice than in the game, itself. Because that’s what’s important to them at that stage of their career. And I’m almost to that point, where you’d rather just go out and practice…teach. I enjoy seeing kids learn, and I enjoy seeing them grow up and being prepared, during and after football. I mean it. I like that.
As the school’s principal, there’s no difference in his pride over Marion Local’s state-wide reputation for scholastic standing, as compared to Marion Local football. His consistency, on and off the field, is unerring.
“Scholastically, whatever impact I’ve had is the same as with football. You try to put the puzzle pieces together, staff-wise, in the best spots to get the kids ready and then to finish them off for academic and life success.”
“It’s really all the same,” he said this week. “There’s no conflict in this office. We’re in the top 5% again, scholastically, and for sure that’s part of my DNA. I don’t know exactly where we ranked last year yet, because it hasn’t been possted, and whatever impact I’ve had on that is the same as with football. You try to put the puzzle pieces together, staff-wise, in the best spots to get the kids ready and then to finish them off for academic and life success, just like football. At least as much as you can. I’m excited to see where we were last year, because I know it’s going to be up there.”
My first experience with Goodwin came on opening weekend of the 2004 season when the Flyers lost to Troy Christian, at home, 19-12. Troy Christian had a good running back named Andrew Lightfoot who wore Marion’s defense out in the first half before lightning suspended play until the next day.
Saturday morning came and Lightfoot picked up where he left off. At 5’11”, and about 210 pounds, he punished would-be Marion tacklers.
Afterwards, I approached Goodwin for a post-game comment and discovered that he doesn’t suffer fools, or foolish questions, lightly.
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“You never really figured out a way to stop Andrew Lightfoot, did you?” I asked Goodwin, who stared at me blankly. “That’s unusual for Marion Local football, isn’t is?”
He looked away for a second, considering his response, then looked me right in the eye and said. “You just watched us for two days…and that’s the best question you’ve got?”
Note to self: Prepare accordingly and execute better. That’s how you win with Tim Goodwin. With everyone, actually. And Goodwin has taught himself over the years to weigh his own ‘mulligan’ moments with care.
“It’s not a new thing, and whether you want to believe it or not…the older I get the more time I think about what His plan may now be for me.”
He never talks about his achievements at Marion without mentioning the support of the Marion community, and the character of its people. Success is a habit built upon hard work, ethics, expectation…and faith.
And a core value of that faith is that of good things yet to come, to those who go about their work diligently – expectantly. Learn to deal with the hand you’re dealt!
“People don’t understand from the outside that we presently have three of the smallest classes of boys in my 27 years here,” says Goodwin. “And they’re currently all in the high school, sophomore, junior, and senior classes.
“If we normally have 40 boys to a class, about 20 of them will play football, and a dozen of them will be players. As it is we have about 25 boys per class, 12 of them will play football, and the best break out, accordingly,” he adds. “But those bigger classes that we used to have are on the way back, again.”
Those who have benefited from the Marion Local experience are coming back to raise their own families under its influence.
His life as the son of a football coach has been regimented from the start. His playbook is internal – innate. He delights over good decision-making, even to mention state senators Al Cutrona (Canfield) and Sarah Fowler Arthur (Ashtabula) who have advanced the “Success Sequence” – a three-step life formula for avoiding poverty and deprivation to be shared in Ohio public schools as curriculum, recently signed into law by Governor Mike DeWine.
“What is it they say?” Goodwin asks. “Graduate high school first. Get a full-time job. And get married before you have children. This area figured that out forever ago, and as it turns out, it works. And it’s not just the Marion Local community, but the MAC community and places like it across the state. It seems to take care of a lot of our problems…God’s plan for things.
He’s won in divisions V, VI, and VII with the smallest classes in his coaching tenure, cynics claim, “Play someone your own size.”
“It’s not a new thing, and whether you want to believe it or not, the older I get the more time I think about what God’s plan may now be for me. I’m reading a book about when an athlete dies twice. Once when his skills diminish, and once [permanently] when it’s his time. For sure, there’s a big part of me that’s trying to figure that out.”
Not surprising if you know Tim Goodwin, he spends little time talking about how last year’s 12-1 Flyers will ‘rebound’ and be their champion selves again in 2026.
“We’re just trying to see who we are,” he says.
“We open with Cary and Harvest Prep, and Harvest Prep’s quarterback is going to Bowling Green. It’s the two toughest non-conference games we’ve played in years. And with the balance in our league this year, I’m taking nothing for granted with any of those games.”
Whatever you ask, Tim Goodwin answers. And the best questions these days are not necessarily football, but the game beyond the end lines – of work, character, and the right sequence of things.
The intersection that comes with competition on Friday nights now exists in a different light. Having won it all, the new opponent is another crossroad…a life decision .
It’s looming.
And no surprise. He’s preparing.