Quisno back in the game

CASTALIA — Gary Quisno brought his first Oak Harbor football team to Margaretta in 1986 to take on a powerful group of Polar Bears. The Rockets fell behind 16-0 at halftime before regrouping in their locker room under the bleachers. "Our locker room was under the old bleachers and we could hear people saying 'welcome to the SBC' at halftime," said Quisno. "We came back in the second half and lost 16-8." That Margaretta team went on to finish runner-up in the state in Division IV. Quisno went on to build a hall of fame coaching career that included 29 successful seasons at Oak Harbor before stepping down as a head coach in 2009 at Perkins. Now he's back, and his mission is to invigorate a Margaretta program that has had only one winning season in the past 11 years. "We had some great battles with Margaretta back in the day," he said. "I felt that we can reawaken that. There's no reason we can't, but we have our work cut out for us." This is Quisno's 34th season as a head coach. He took the Margaretta job in January after a little arm-twisting by athletic director Drew Grahl, who was an AD at Oak Harbor during Quisno's time with the Rockets. "I was out of coaching since 2015, but I knew Drew Grahl real well from my days at Oak Harbor," Quisno said. "He called me about someone else who had applied for the job. I'd been thinking about getting back into it. When I heard this was going to open, I thought I'd get ahold of whoever got the job and see if they want me as an assistant." Assistant? Grahl wanted Quisno calling the shots, and inquired about the veteran coach's interest. "You thought any more about it?" Grahl asked Quisno after their initial conversation. Quisno told Grahl he was thinking about it, and his wife, Becky, had some advice. "She said do what you want to do, but I just don't want to hear you complain," he said. One more call sealed the deal. "Next day I get a call from him and Ed Kurt, the superintendent, and they were talking me into it," he said. "I said, 'OK, I'll put my name in and I can think about it.' Next thing, here I am. I was excited to take the job and I still am." Quisno, a Port Clinton graduate, got his first head coaching job at Danbury when he was just 22. He was coming off a fine college career at Miami University in Oxford, Ohio. The Redskins dominated the Mid-American Conference at the time and won three straight Tangerine Bowls, defeating Florida, Georgia and South Carolina. "I'll argue with anybody that we had the best MAC football team ever," said Quisno, a tight end who earned three letters at Miami. "We lost one game in three years and that was to Michigan State." After two years at Danbury, he moved on to Oak Harbor in 1979. Quisno compiled a 224-83 record in 29 seasons leading the Rockets and was inducted into the Ohio High School Football Coaches Association Hall of Fame in 2013. Perkins was his most recent stop as a head coach and assistant. Quisno's Pirates went 16-5 in 2008 and 2009 before he stepped down due to health issues. The day after a loss to Clyde in 2009, Quisno tried to mow his lawn. He didn't get far. "I could go about 20 feet and had to sit my butt down," he said. On Monday, a school nurse checked him out and sent him to the hospital. Quisno said his heart was "all over the place." His heart had developed an atrial flutter, a condition that causes the heart's upper chambers to beat too fast. "I was laying in a hospital room and I said that's God's way of telling me to get out of this," Quisno said. "I missed it and two years later I came back and was an assistant coach over there." Quisno was Perkins' offensive coordinator from 2012-15 before returning to Danbury as athletic director and dean of students from 2016-18. Now he's back on the sideline and has compiled a coaching staff with which he's comfortable. Quisno, who turned 68 recently, doesn't dwell on the past. When Grahl introduced him as a "hall of fame coach" at a meeting attended by his new players and their parents, Quisno changed the narrative. "I said that's in the past; that has nothing to do with this," Quisno said. "I was fortunate enough to be in places where the community, players and administration bought in and we were successful. We need the same thing here and then we can make good things happen. So far they have. We've had a good response."