Adams reflects on past, looks to future as FHS coach

Stefan Adams gave his Findlay High football players a bit of a break this month. Truth be told, he could use one himself. "Here's how it went," said Adams, sitting in the Findlay High football coaches' office with his infant son, Dax, on his lap. "I got married in December, I was named (Findlay High) head coach in February, we had this little guy in April — April 21 to be exact — and two days later we closed on a house. "Then, with everything else going on — schedules, getting the calendar down for the year, all the little things in between — with the OHSAA changes (eliminating the 10-day limitation coaches can have with their teams between June 1 and July 31), with kids going here and there for camps .... "We've been at it, trying to install a new offense, new defense, new special teams, a new program culture. Not that anybody else's was wrong or bad. It's just that is what I do, what I'm about, and we're trying to imprint that on kids who now have had three coaches in three years. "So much was going on, but so much good was going on, and I wouldn't have it any other way. June was a hectic month, though, so we cut it back a bit to give the kids time to be kids and not be around football so much, and for me to take some time and just be Stefan, just be a dad and a husband." A mid-summer break was a perfect time to learn more about Adams, a counselor in the Findlay school system who will be the 39th head coach in Findlay High history when the Trojans kickoff the 2021 season against Anthony Wayne in an Aug. 20 home opener at Donnell Stadium. No stranger to the local gridirons, he's been an assistant coach at both the University of Findlay (2010-2014) and Findlay High (2017 and 2019), and was Riverdale's head coach in 2020. A three-sport standout at West Chester's Henderson High School in Pennsylvania, Adams earned 11 varsity letters in football (4), basketball (3) and track and field (4), where he was a four-time state qualifier in the shot and discus. Recruited by Bloomsburg University alum and highly respected NBA official Ed Rush, Adams played for Danny Hale, a 2022 candidate for the College Football Hall of Fame, and was a fullback on Huskies' teams that twice qualified for the NCAA Division II playoffs, including a national runner-up finish in 2000. Adams credits a strong family unit and the influential leadership he saw in coaches during his playing days for developing the coach the teacher and the man that he today. "My dad was very fortunate to make it out of a very rough neighborhood in Philadelphia," Adams said. "He was a communications major in college, but a professor said he needed to clean up his language, so he took English as a minor and ended up teaching English most of his career. Finally, his last few years he did get to do his mass-com, video production and all that stuff. "He coached three sports, too. He lived a great life and left a left a legacy that will forever be impacted on that school district (Bayard Rustin), which named a wing of their school after him. "I saw what my dad was doing. I saw what my mom, a first-grade teacher, was doing. I saw what my coaches like Joe Walsh (high school), Danny Hale and Ed Rush were doing ... From them I always had what I know now is a good perspective. I was just trying to live up to all the right things they gave me." Adams was an assistant at Bloomsburg while earning his masters degree. His studies, he says, weren't limited to the classroom. "When I got to Bloomsburg, that was probably the most impactful group of men I've been around," Adams said. "Danny Hall was a great people person, a great leader of men, coaches and players. I wanted to learn as much as I could, so I was always hanging around the coaches office. Granted, I studied the Xs and Os, but I watched all that other stuff, the way he captured a room, how he handled practice, the way he talked to players. I wasn't that big socially as far as going out and doing all the things my peers were doing. I was just doing something I loved to do, something I thought might be my future one day. "Those guys gave me the confidence that you can be whatever you want to be, you can take this to the next level, you can be as good as you want to be." Adams graduated from Bloomsburg with no guarantees. He did, though, have some connections. "When you're looking for a full-time gig, it's not who you know, it's who knows you," Adams said. Bloomsburg plays in the East Division of the Pennsylvania State Athletic Conference. Slippery Rock is in the PSAC West. Current University of Findlay head coach Rob Keys and former UF assistant Thomas Howard (now at North Carolina A&T) were at Slippery Rock when Adams was an assistant at Bloomsburg. After a few back-and-forth phone calls, Adams was headed for Findlay, Ohio. "We were talking football. We were talking about life. They said if I didn't have anything going on, to come on out," Adams said. "It was kind of a leap of faith because I wasn't guaranteed a job-job. It was kind of on a volunteer basis. I knew — fingers crossed — I had to go out and try to get a job in the school district. But I felt in order for me to take the next step to being a coach and increasing my knowledge of the game, I had to get away. I knew I had to expand my boundaries and my horizons and I'll tell you, the guys here — Troy Rothenbuhler, Kory Allen, Coach Keys — they really, really, really took the Xs and Os and running a program to the next level." Hired as a counselor for the Findlay school system, Adams was an assistant for Findlay High in 2017. In 2018, though, he decided to return to West Chester as Henderson's High's head coach in what for him became a transformative and personally solidifying period of his life. "Walking out on that field, head coach of your old high school, under the Friday night lights," Adams recalled. "It's what you dream of, right? I loved every second of it. It was a great opportunity." Adams came to realize, though, that the dream might have been misinterpreted. "I never really told anybody this out loud," Adams said. "I don't defend myself — ever. I make decisions and I live by those decisions. But when my father passed away, I made the decision to go back home. Looking back on it, I was trying to connect with him again. I was trying to make that connection or maybe get that closure I needed from an emotional or spiritual standpoint to connect with my best friend, the guy I looked up to, the guy who was my absolute hero. "My dad made it out of north Philadelphia, came to West Chester and created his legacy there. I need to let his legacy be there. What I realized is that sometimes you find your match, but don't realize it until you leave. Everything was great (in West Chester) but I just felt that everything I had started here (in Findlay) I didn't get a chance to finish. "I started here, and now it was time for me to finish my legacy here, and me doing that would be carrying on his legacy, too."