Crescent-News.com - Howard has sights set high

By C. MARTINEZ-BRANDON
martinez@crescent-news.com

As a first-time head coach, Gardner Howard is relishing the task of taking his Scott Bulldogs and turning them into winners on and off the field.

After going 1-9 a year ago and 32-68 during the 10-year tutelage of predecessor Matt Davis, Howard's plan for the Bulldogs is simple.

"Our first goal is to work hard and represent ourselves, the school and the community in a positive way," explained Howard, who is a 1994 Defiance High School graduate. "From there we'll take it one game at a time.

"I told them I'm going to command excellence," added Howard, who was not only an all-state performer on the gridiron for the DHS Bulldogs, but was also a starter for the Bowling Green State University Falcons. "I told them that they need to do things the right way. I told them that they need to believe in one another, to be a family."

And with two-a-days in full swing, Howard is putting his words into action. It may be a simple philosophy, but for Howard it's one that he learned early on while playing for Defiance mentor Jerry Buti and one that Howard has carried with him at his stops as an assistant at Toledo Woodward and Toledo St. John's Jesuit.

"That was one of the things I took from coach Buti," explained Howard. "We didn't have a lot of sayings or anything like that, but we talked about being family.

"The first person I think of in football that influenced me (the most) is coach Buti," added Howard. "When I first moved to Defiance the team wasn't very good and as I entered high school it was coach Buti's first few years."

And the four-year relationship between Buti and Howard forever changed the head-coach-to-be.

"He (Buti) worked very hard at it (coaching)," recalled Howard. "It's how he did it. He was always the first one there and the last one to leave, you never had to guess where coach was. He instilled in us hard work and dedication and he didn't just say it, he showed it. And he treated everyone the same from an all-league senior to a sophomore holding a dummy, he was the same person to everyone."

Now with his own team to mentor, Howard is looking to be a positive role model for inner-city Toledo kids. For Howard, it starts with his position as the dean of students at Robinson Junior High, a primary feeder school to Scott, then extends to how he conducts himself in everyday life and the people that he surrounds himself with on his coaching staff.

"I still consider myself a young man that can relate to the players," said the 31-year-old Howard. "I've been through similar things that they're going through, I know there are distractions by things in society that can lead you astray. So I try to be a positive influence and my staff also resembles that. They're (my staff) men the players can look up to and see themselves in and see what they can do with they're lives if they take the same positive steps."

Before landing the job at Scott, Howard tried to get his foot in the head coaching door at other schools, only to be turned away. Now, Howard feels that his being with the Bulldogs was predestined.

"I pondered that a long time," admitted Howard when asked if he felt like a higher power guided him to Scott. "I feel like it's meant for me to be here. You know the same year I got the job at Robinson (Junior High School) is the same year I got the head coaching job in the same community, the same area. It seams like it all fits, like it was meant to be."

Now it's the community that he hopes his players will represent in a positive light.

"These kids need to be very proud of their community," said Howard. "It (the community) has a rich heritage and we need to help reconnect to that. But no one is going to do it for them, hopefully this will help build leadership in these kids.

"But I told them we're all in it together and we'll all make mistakes," ended Howard. "We'll all live and learn, but I tell them to charge (the mistakes) to my head not my heart and we'll all learn together."