HEYEN: Losing Lucas Poggiali is a shame for Sandusky

This column isn't about Sandusky's hiring process. This is about Lucas Poggiali. He's one of those people who always asks how you're doing and really means it. He's one of those people who can connect with anyone, of any race, of any age. And he's Sandusky, a Blue Streak through and through. At least he was, before recent negativity pushed him to make the decision to leave the district athletic department, focusing rightly on the choice that was best for his family. For the entire school district and the students Poggiali had the potential to mentor and lead, it's a brutal loss. I'm not from here, and I can't claim to have known Poggiali's name before he returned home to become Sandusky's football coach ahead of the 2022 season. But it didn't take long to see the pride Poggiali takes in Sandusky, a place that is in his blood and in his bones. And it didn't take long to see the type of leader Poggiali is, and the type of supporter he was of all the Blue Streaks. There's a moment in my mind from this track season, a sport in which Poggiali served as an assistant coach. A Sandusky distance runner was competing in the two-mile, hanging out in dead last. Poggiali looked at his stopwatch, saw the hope for some kind of personal achievement for the young man, and jogged across the infield toward the other side of the track to root the runner on. Almost every week of the 2023 football season called on Poggiali to be a remarkable leader or risk the season slipping away, and he was. A loss with time expired in Week 1. A one-score loss to those rivals from Fremont in Week 2. But then the Blue Streaks rebounded to win their next two games, by one score, in the closing minutes. Week 6 came around, and state-ranked Tiffin Columbian broke Sandusky's hearts on a weird punt advancement play that neither head coach had ever seen before. And yet the Blue Streaks bounced back again, thudding Norwalk and turning defeat into victory in the last seconds at Clyde with a defensive stand and return touchdown. When junior Dennarius Walk dislocated his hip in Week 10, Poggiali stayed by his side in the hospital. He encouraged Walk to believe he could make it back to sports, despite a grim initial diagnosis. And Walk did indeed make it back on the baseball diamond, and will return to the football field for his senior season, too. Wrote Walk's mother, Diana Knerr, on Facebook: "You came and cried and prayed over my son right after the game when most would have just went home to their own families. These kids are your family, though, you see no other way. When they told him sports was no longer an option for him, you reassured him that he would be back out there (and look at him now)." Those aren't the things that go on a resume for an athletic director position. But those are things that stick with you, evidence that has no other direction than to speak volumes about the man leading the way. "The best coach I've ever played for," 2024 Sandusky graduate Easton Young wrote on X. "He did so much for me on and off the field and is one of the greatest role models I've ever had. A true father figure to me." Losing Lucas Poggiali is an outcome Sandusky should never have allowed to enter the picture. Not the administration, or the school board, or even the community on both sides of this issue. I can't claim to know everything about Sandusky's hiring process. Frankly, neither can most of the people who pushed back so vehemently that a native son felt he had no space left in his home. But the goal of every job search is to get the best person. This position was always going to have multiple strong applicants. Poggiali, with his experience in the building and with many of the district's athletes, to go along with impeccable character and leadership, was certainly one of them. And instead of Sandusky's own taking the athletic director job and leading all of the Blue Streaks' athletic programs for the next quarter-century, he's gone. He didn't even feel welcome enough to stay on with the football team, one whose 2024 season looks incredibly promising, one whose players are certainly hurting with the suddenness of this loss of leadership. I've spent the past two weeks trying to wrap my head around how this can be best for Sandusky, how pushing away someone so good, so true to this place can be the right move. I can't come up with the logic. All that's clear to me is this: Lucas Poggiali is the kind of guy any school would be lucky to have in a front-facing, decision-making role. And losing him is a damn shame for Sandusky.