(Second of two parts)

EAST LIVERPOOL — Lou Holtz found his love for football while playing for East Liverpool High School. His love for coaching began at Ravenna High School soon afterwards.

After graduating from East Liverpool High School in 1954, Holtz went to Kent State University to pursue his degree. He wasn’t the best student, but he wanted to be a coach. That was how he got involved with the Ravenna football team.

“I coached the freshmen at Ravenna High School,” Holtz said. “I didn’t have a car but I walked 5 miles every day to coach the freshman. We went undefeated that year. Please don’t ask me how but we did.”

Holtz worked at the Evening Review, wrapping bundles in the mail room to save money for Kent State. Holtz then walked onto the Kent State football team because he was told it would help him in his coaching prowess.

Working hard and getting the job done no matter what was the another thing that Holtz learned growing up in East Liverpool and Follansbee.

“Find something you like to do, find something you do well and find someone to pay you do it,” Holtz said.

“If you want to do something bad enough, you will find a way. If you don’t want to do it, you will find an excuse. Excuses are much easier to find than solutions.

“You have to give it some thought, but there is an answer to every problem that comes up,” Holtz added. “I had a strong faith in God and there was no doubt in my mind that I was going to be a productive citizen. I was going to raise a family and teach them the same values that we were taught by the nuns, the teachers, and the principals. It was a family in East Liverpool. Everybody cared about each other.”

Walking to Ravenna every day and walking onto the Kent State football team were just some of the ways that Holtz proved that if you want something bad enough, you will do it.

Holtz started coaching at Ravenna after a broken collarbone sidelined him for a year at Kent State.

After taking the freshmen to an undefeated 11-0 season at Ravenna, Holtz started turning some heads in the area. Holtz also helped out coaching the Kent State freshmen team.

In high school and college, Holtz always knew he had the mind of a coach.

“I knew every assignment on the team when I was in the game,” Holtz said. “I would tell the guy next to me what he was supposed to do and things along that line.

“I remember once I went to college, in English class, I was drawing offenses and defenses,” Holtz said. “I wasn’t a very good student but those days if your father paid taxes, they had to give one semester to prove that you could do the work or that you couldn’t.”

He graduated from Kent State in 1959 with a degree in history. Holtz was involved in ROTC so he went and joined the Army reserves.

Even though Holtz struggled at times in school, he finished with a 3.0 grade-point average throughout his time at Kent State.

He trained under Kent State’s Army Reserves Officers Training Corps and earned a commission as a field artillery officer in the United States Army Reserve at the time of his graduation from college. He began his coaching career as a graduate assistant at Iowa in 1960, where he received his master’s degree.

“He got his masters at the University of Iowa where the coach was Forest Evashevski,” Frank “Digger” Dawson said. “A Michigan grad and was a blocking back for Tom Harmon.” Harmon was the Heisman Trophy winner in 1940.

Evashevski was a proud and recognized name in college football and would be later inducted into the College Football Hall of Fame in 2000 as a coach.

“He always had that determination,” Dawson said about Holtz fast rise.

At Iowa, the Hawkeyes finished second in the country during Holtz’s first season.

“Bob Duffy was the (Evening Review) sports editor at the time and he treated me kindly in the news media,” Holtz said.

“One of my many jobs was (at Iowa) to entertain the visiting coaches when they came to the school,” Holtz said.

Through that, he met the head coach at William & Mary, Milt Drewer, and was offered a job as an assistant. He started there the next season in 1961. From there, Holtz was an assistant at Connecticut, South Carolina and Ohio State for one year under Woody Hayes.

After the 1968 Ohio State Buckeyes won the national championship with Holtz as an assistant, Holtz was offered the head job at William & Mary in 1969. The rest as they say, is history. Holtz finished his college coaching career with a 249-132-7 record, including a national championship at Notre Dame in 1988. He was inducted into the College Football Hall of Fame in 2008.

Even though Holtz has made it to the highest of levels in the college football realm. he still checks in on the Potters once in a while.

“I still keep up with the Potters,” Holtz said. “Every time I am back in East Liverpool, I go by Patterson Field. They keep it nice and painted. Great memories there.”