This is one of many stories about the Ohio High School Athletic Association football championship games for the 50th anniversary of the first OHSAA playoff tournament.
Saint Henry, Ohio, grows corn, soybeans, wheat, oats and ball players.
The most visible structure in the city – apart from the Catholic Church of St. Henry – it's a welcome to St. Henry sign declaring it his home Jim Lachey, Bobby Hoying, Jeff Hartings and Wally Post.
Hoying was a quarterback who made Ohio State's all-time team. Post, Hoying's grandfather, is in the Cincinnati Reds Hall of Fame. Lachey was one of “The Hogs” during Washington's Joe Gibbs/Super Bowl era.
The panoramic view from the church steeple is farms in every direction. These acres have withered in memory Hartings, now 50 and coaching football at Worthington Christian High School.
Hartings' 11-year NFL career, highlighted by his interception of Ben Roethlisberger when Pittsburgh won Super Bowl XL, was planted in those fields. The landscape is common for communities in the Midwest Athletic Conference (MAC), which, on the 50th anniversary of the OHSAA instituting a football playoff system, boasts 39 state football championships.
Hartings talks about MAC country from different sides of life.
“My dad worked full-time draining a field,” he said in a recent interview. “He worked part-time, I did farm work from a young age.
“When I was in eighth grade, I was out there throwing 800 bales of hay a day, shoveling corn, 300 shovels into a hopper, throwing bags of oats and wheat.”
It was invaluable strength training.
“It had an immediate effect on me getting to the NFL and then staying healthy,” Hartings said.
Hartings blocked for Hoying as St. Henry won its first of six state championships, overcoming a 17-0 deficit to beat Newark Catholic 20-17 in the 1990 Class V state finals in Massillon.
MAC's top dog now is Marion Local, centered around the village of Maria Stein.
OHSAA Football State Finals:Marion Local, Coldwater and the border monster of the OHSAA football playoffs, Midwest Athletic Conference
“Ninety percent of Marion Local is farm country,” Hartings said. “The communities in the MAC are similar, and it starts with the Catholic church downtown. The schools are right next to the churches. You connect faith with education. Farm country is everywhere.”
St. Henry is one of eight public schools in the MAC. The Catholic school exception is Delphos St. John's.
Todd Schulte, who comes from a family of brothers who played for St. John's, has coached there for 24 years.
“I was a sophomore when (Hoying and Hartings) were seniors,” Schulte said. “It was very scary going to play St. Henry then.'
The vast majority of the MAC's top players don't make it all the way to college football's MAC, the Mid-American Conference. Schulte's brother Scott, for example, was a player of the year before he starred at Hillsdale.
“The Midwest Athletic Conference is full of hard-working, family-oriented, faith-based communities that are a good foundation for the kids we coach every day,” Schulte said. “We just blend right in. Some of these communities are just as Catholic as we are.”
Hartings grew up a fan of the Catholic giant of college football, Notre Dame. He was a sophomore at St. Henry when Lou Holtz's Fighting Irish won the 1988 national championship. He ended up at Penn State, blocking for Ki-Jana Carter and Kerry Collins on a team that went 12-0.
The landscape of college life was different and he liked it.
“I was sheltered growing up in terms of Christian diversity,” she said. “Growing up in that environment, you could feel that this was the best way, the only way to practice the Christian faith.
“I learned after that, at Penn State a little bit but a lot more in the pros, to really start practicing the faith in nondenominational and evangelical places. I realized that while the Catholic faith is a great way to practice the Christian faith, it's not it is the only way to have a relationship with God.
“There's not a lot of racial diversity at MAC schools. Having gone through Penn State with my African-American teammates, knowing them as great people and great friends, I'm extremely grateful for that experience.
“This has led me to adopt three African-American children and have many African-American friends over the years. America has become much more diverse and I've seen it where I live in the Columbus area.”
Hartings was a first-round draft pick of the Lions in 1996. He spent five years in Detroit, left as a free agent and played six years with the Steelers.
While he is happy that he has grown, he is grateful that he grew up where he did.
“I've often thought that if I hadn't been a football player, I wouldn't have had any problems at all, and I'd probably want to come back, after college, to Mercer County,” he said. “When I think of these communities, I think of close-knit families, lifelong friendships, faith.
“These things kind of represent what you want America to be about as a foundation. But you could combine the diversity of different ways of practicing faith and the diversity from a racial standpoint, which makes what we want America to be all about.” about”.
Hartings has coached at Worthington Christian for eight years, the last six as head coach. His travels lead him to believe that instilling discipline is more difficult in most of Ohio than in the MAC.
“It's not a black or white thing, it's a family thing,” he said. “I've talked to coaches who say, 'Man, it's just so hard to coach these guys. It's such a broken community. Almost none of the kids have mum and dad at home.”
“I can tell you that in St. Henry, in Coldwater, New Bremen and other MAC communities, the divorce rate is very low.”
Hartings attends one Detroit game and one Pittsburgh game each year. He empathizes with fellow Browns fans who learn he was with the Steelers when they rallied from a 17-point deficit to beat Cleveland 33-30 in a famous playoff game.
“I really love football,” he said. “I told myself when I was at Penn State that I was either going to the NFL or coaching.
“I believe God called me to be a coach because it was the best way to share my faith with young men.”
Worthington Christian's 2022 team went 8-4, falling to Bellaire in the second round of the playoffs.
Back in Midwest Athletic Conference country, the St. Henry and Delphos St. John's have gone quiet. St. Henry went 2-9 in 2022. St. John's was 5-7. Part of that is because they play most of their schedules against MAC opponents.
“I'm humbled to be a part of this league,” Schulte said. “The playoff record speaks for itself. Beyond that, there are many values that our communities share.
“Just go look around our world today. Some of these things are slipping away from us pretty quickly. I think we still have some of them here.”
Contact Steve at steve.doerschuk@cantonrep.com
On Twitter: @sdoerschukREP
