A Chat with Twinsburg Football's New Head Coach Joe Schiavone

Last week Twinsburg High School athletic director Alex Popovich announced the hiring of Joe Schiavone as the new head coach of the Tigers football team.  Schiavone had been a defensive coordinator with Twinsburg for three years before taking on the head job. Twinsburg Patch had a chance to catch up with Schiavone.

Twinsburg Patch: Tell us about your football experience.

Joe Schiavone: As a player I played at Nordonia High School down the road.  In college I played at Mount Union as a part of the '96-'97 national championship team, so I’ve been around football for a long time. Ever since I got my teaching degree I’ve been coaching. During my student teaching I coached the middle school in Alliance and that was a great experience. Right out of college I coached at Benedictine High School for a while and won a few state championships there as an assistant and coordinator and then on to Twinsburg.

TP: Why do you like coaching football?

JS: It’s a great team sport. I love the fact that you can impact the lives of young men because football has a lot of life lessons in it and showing them how to overcome adversity and how to work together and handle certain situations, and be committed to the program. Our kids are great and they’ve bought into what we do. So it’s fun to coach our kids every day and we have a lot of great athletes.

TP: Do you think the state championships at Benedictine helped your chances of getting the job?

JS: (laughs) It doesn’t hurt! I have been lucky to be a part of a lot of championship teams in college and in coaching high school and have had some success so far in my coaching career.  When you’re coaching extra games, you learn so much more and it helps in your preparation for whoever you’re playing.

TP: What are you most excited about this season?

JS: I’m excited because we are now going to be up in the top division of the Northern Ohio Conference, so our schedule from week one to week 10 is top-notch. I’m excited about that and our kids are excited because we play teams like Solon, Strongsville, Brunswick, Mentor, all the playoff-proven teams. We’ve had some success over the years so they want to see how they compare and match up against these guys. It’s going to be a great challenge for us.

TP: What will you do differently than has been done in previous years?

JS: I would be foolish to overhaul things. You’re always looking to improve how you go about things, whether that be “X’s and O’s” or just the program in general. Looking into next year we have a lot of returners coming back so we want to make their transition with me as the head coach as seamless as possible. From the outside looking in there’s minimal change, but from the inside there’s things that I’m looking at to be more productive in certain scenarios and how we can run a smoother program.

TP: This may be a tough question, but can you give us a prediction for your record this year?

JS: I’m not one to predict because if I could predict I wouldn’t be coaching, I’d be playing the lottery every day. Our expectations are to compete for the conference championship, make the playoffs, run deep into the playoffs and attain that prize of the state championship. Numbers don’t matter as much as our kids competing. With how well our assistant coaches prepare and how hard our kids work, our schedule will be a representation of how well we do things and it will be a good record.