Toby Hammond returning to SMCC as football coach

SANDUSKY — It's been 30 years since Toby Hammond served as head football coach at St. Mary Central Catholic.He's coming back, trying to bring the program back to the playoff level he left it back in 1990."This is a special place," Hammond said Tuesday. "I always thought this was a special place and that you don't understand that unless you've graduated from here or worked here for a period of time. This is the only place I ever really thought about coming back to."The school made it official Tuesday, with Hammond on hand to meet potential candidates for the team in 2020."I'm not sure what motivated Toby to send out a letter, but we're sure glad he did," said Toby Notestine, who stepped down as head coach at the end of the 2019 season to focus on his duties as athletic director and dean of students at SMCC. "We went through the process and felt we ended with three good final candidates but that Toby brings a lot to the table."SMCC interview multiple candidates for the job and had a second session with the final three. Hammond's success at multiple levels of the game helped tip the scales in his favor."I've always had respected Toby, not only from knowing his tradition with our school, but also coaching against him and playing against teams he coached," said SMCC principal Ryan Wikel. "He prides himself that his teams play hard, that his teams have high character, which is what we''re looking for here."Hammond's first order of business is to drum up excitement for football and get more kids out when practice begins in August."There's a lot of stuff kids can get into that wasn't around 30 years ago," Hammond said. "All the Twitter and Facebook crap, along with so many other things kids can get involved in that they don't have to work as hard for. Football is not easy, but it teaches you more about life than any other sport because it isn't easy."I think kids now think things should be handed to them instead of earning them, and those are the things you have to try and fight against. Kids have changed, but parenting has changed. Not all of them, but some parents want to be best friends with their sons or daughters instead of being more demanding of them and not just handing them things instead of earning it."Hammond started at SMCC as a freshman coach under Bud Moody. He moved up to varsity assistant for three years under Butch Weyer and took over in 1985, compiling a 46-22 record with three playoff appearances, including to a run to the Division V state championship game in 1990 before stepping down to take the job as coach at Edison.After one season at Edison, Hammond spent the next three years as an assistant coach at Tiffin University before taking over the Tiffin Calvert program for nine seasons, taking the Senecas to the playoffs five times. He then coached at Port Clinton for nine seasons and spent the last five as an assistant for Keith Mora at Danbury."He's just been incredibly valuable to our program," Mora said. "Me, being a younger coach, I've been able to sit back and listen to what he talks about and take in a lot of knowledge that he has. He's forgotten more about football than a lot of people will ever know. He's going to a tremendous job at St. Mary. I'm very excited to see him get to go back to a place that, in many ways, was where it all started for him."Hammond is a member of the SMCC Hall of Fame. He was a member of the 2014 class that was inducted in January 2015."I'd like to thank Pat Adkins, the superintendent at Port Clinton, and Carrie Sanchez, my building principal, and all the teachers I got to know and work with at the middle school and high school," Hammond said. "And I also need to thank Keith Mora at Danbury because he gave me the opportunity to stay involved in the game. Keith is young and I learned a lot from him and, hopefully, he learned a lot from me."Hammond, who has spent the last 16 years working as a teacher in the Port Clinton City Schools, will also return to SMCC as a teacher in a yet to be determined position."That's the longest I've ever been at one place, so I felt it was time for a change," he said of his time in the Port Clinton system. "I was happy at Danbury, doing what I was doing, but when Toby (Notestine) resigned, I started thinking about it and thought I'd like to do it one more time. I got my beginnings as a head coach here and hopefully will end here."The St. Mary job is complicated because of its status remains up in the air as to whether the school will have the numbers to return to the 11-man game next season or have to play the 8-man game the Panthers were forced to play last fall because of dwindling participation. The administration would like to return to the 11-man format, but that decision won't be finalized until late next month."It was kind of unusual that we had to ask the candidates what was their 11-man plan and what was their 8-man plan because we're not sure yet," Notestine said. "I think the final three candidates understood we're not exactly sure yet, but it's part of the process for our new head coach. It's our goal to get those numbers up so we can play 11-man football again.""I prefer 11-man," Hammond added. "It's more spots for kids to get involved and play, but there's more than the 11 guys playing or the eight guys playing. It's the band, it's the cheerleaders and the boosters selling stuff. It's what high school sports is supposed to be about." Toby Hammond was a member of the 2014 SMCC Hall of Fame class. St. Mary Central Catholic principal Ryan Wikel, right, introduces new football coach Toby Hammond on Tuesday at the downtown Sandusky school.