ASHTABULA TOWNSHIP — Sometimes, it’s difficult to see the forest for the trees. Lou Wisnyai, a 1987 Edgewood graduate, may be a perfect example of that. As a young athlete, Wisnyai loved baseball. He dreamed of playing for the Indians. He would pursue the sport in college. But in dreaming of one uniform, he had overlooked his ability to be great in another one.

But those who had seen him play football for the Warriors know just how good he was. Wisnyai will be inducted into the Ashtabula County Football Hall of Fame at the annual Ashtabula County Touchdown Club Awards Dinner and Banquet in December.

“You try to stay humble,” Wisnyai, the son of Lou and Mary Wisnyai, said. “It’s such an achievement that’s given to you. Honestly, I never thought this honor would come around. Everyone thinks they had good years in high school. And I felt I did (have good years).

“But I read the stories about the guys going in (to the Hall of Fame) and compare what I did to what they did and I didn’t think what I did in high school could be considered on the same level as what some of those guys have done.

“It’s an honor to be thought of as one of the better players in Ashtabula County history. I didn’t see myself like that. I was just another player on a good football team. Hopefully, another couple of Wisnyais will get in. We’ll see.”

 

Baseball star

A young Wisnyai devoted himself to becoming a great baseball player and spent minimal time on the football field.

“I played baseball from Little League on,” Wisnyai said. “I played midget league for two or three years. I didn’t play football in seventh grade and I joined up again in eighth grade.”

From the time he was young, Wisnyai dreamed of playing for the Indians and hitting in cavernous Cleveland Stadium. However, if he had the chance to do it over again, Wisnyai may well have dedicated himself to the gridiron a little more.

“I did love playing baseball,” Wisnyai said. “Every son wants to follow in his father’s footsteps and that’s where I was headed. Hindsight is 20/20, and if I could go back to 1985, I wouldn’t take anything away from baseball, but I would have put more offseason effort into football. Every kid wanted to play at Cleveland Stadium and I was going to be one of them… for the Indians, not the Browns.”

 

Happy hunting

There are few seasons in the history of Edgewood football as great as the fall of 1986. The Warriors, coach and Hall of Fame member Dave Melaragno, finished with but a single blemish at 9-1, just missing out on the state playoffs.

Wisnyai was a key component on that team as a running back.

During that time, a new offense was making its way across the country. Known as the run and shoot, it was later employed by the University of Houston to put up ungodly offensive numbers and win the Heisman Trophy for quarterback Andre Ware. The Detroit Lions and Atlanta Falcons would run versions of it in the NFL in the early 1990s.

Melaragno brought it to Ashtabula County and used Hall of Fame quarterback Brad Petro, Wisnyai, and a stable of backs in having what may well have been the greatest season in Edgewood football history.

Thinking back, it’s easy to think of those Warriors as a grind-it-out team, but that wasn’t truly the case.

“We were split down the middle in total offensive stats,” Wisnyai said. “We had Brad, me, Brian Boles and Tommy Pakkala. It seemed like we did a lot of damage on the ground, but we passed a lot, too. We used the run and shoot. It was just coming around and we were the only team in the county to use it.

“You have to be able to run and throw and we were.”

Wisnyai swears that was possible only because of a certain group up front.

“The offensive line we had, until the day I die I will say was the best around. I know I wouldn’t have had the senior year I had without those six guys up front. We wouldn’t have been 9-1. Everyone wants to carry the ball and score touchdowns, but (the linemen) don’t get to. They accepted it. That’s how good teams are.”

With a good number of weapons, the yards were divided pretty squarely for the Warriors. Wisnyai carried for about 640 yards that season.

“Brian and I started,” Wisnyai said. “We were the big backs. Tommy was the quick-hitter guy. The teams that played us couldn’t just focus on stopping Brad or me or Brian. They had to stop 11 guys. Gary Dietrich was the fullback. People think they know that team don’t know Gary. He was the one blocking for us. He fits in with the linemen. If he doesn’t do his job, there’s no way we do what we did.”

Outside of Buckeye Local Schools, there was little buzz, at least initially, about the Warriors in the fall of 1986.

“That year, the hype was about Geneva and Riverside,” Wisnyai said. “Riverside had this kid named Pat Henrietta and Geneva had Jim Sanchez (who would go on to become the track coach at Edgewood). We were undefeated as freshmen, only lost two games as JVs and a lot of us played varsity as juniors and we were 6-4.

“Our little camp in Ashtabula Township knew we’d be good. The juniors behind us had a lot of talent. At Edgewood, we knew we’d be good, but I think we surprised a lot of people at first. I don’t think we were the favorite that year.”

Ironically, it was after the Warriors’ lone loss that people began to take notice.

“I think it might have been after Game 3 (that people began to notice us),” Wisnyai said. “Solon came down here. They were from Cleveland and everybody thought we were going to get rampaged. They beat us, 14-8. Early in the second half, we had a drive that was like 70 yards and we fumbled going in, inside the 5.

“I think it was nerves in the first half. In the second half, we realized we could play with them. They were just on TV the week before. Coach Mel (head coach Dave Melaragno, himself a Hall of Famer) taped the game. We were all asking, ‘They’re on TV? What do you mean they’re on TV?’ They were mountains walking out and we had to play with these guys.”

At the time, only four teams in each region made the state playoffs. The loss to Solon was a big reason the Warriors did not play in Week 11.

“Though we dropped the game, 14-8, people thought we might be pretty good,” Wisnyai said. “That might have put us behind the 8-ball for the playoffs. Back then, they only took four teams. We were in the fifth or sixth spot. A win over Solon would have put us in.”

There were other scares, but Wisnyai and the Warriors managed to get through unscathed.

“You see where St. John is at now, but in the ’70s they had a couple of teams play for the state championship,” Wisnyai said. “I played against some good St. John teams. They were a small school, but we beat them, 7-6, that year. They missed a field goal late in the game.

“Riverside and Madison were road games. Riverside’s field was slop, but we did what we did all year and held on. The biggest scare I had all year was Ashtabula. They all had speed. They had Sean Allgood, Adrian Mathers, the Heasley brothers, Aaron Morris, who was a decent football player. They were a younger team, but the speed they had… ”

Then there was the game every Warrior gets up for, no matter the year, no matter the sport.

“When you go to Edgewood, you want to beat Conneaut in everything, whether it be golf, basketball, baseball, football or wrestling,” Wisnyai said. “That’s where we went to end the year. That was for the NEC. We went up there and beat them 15-10 on their field. I’ll never forget it. The fans flooded the field. It was something to see.”

There were other games, too, for the Warriors.

“There were routs, too,” Wisnyai said. “We also played a lot of tough games. Against Geneva, we were losing in the fourth quarter and pulled it out.”

Having that kind of run, it’s easy for a team to get cocky.

Those Warriors, however, were held in check on that account.

“We got on a roll,” Wisnyai said. “We won our first two, then there was the Solon setback. In the NEC, we won a couple in a row and people called us cocky. But we didn’t have too many guys like that. We went to work and took care of business. There was never really any panic. The only time we panicked was when St. John lined up for that field goal. Thank God they missed it. But good teams overcome stuff like that.”

Splitting carries and attention is never easy for a running back, especially on a good team. But Wisnyai sees it a bit more philosophically.

“It depends on the kind of game you’re having,” he said. “You’re chomping at the bit if you you’re getting five or six yards every time you carry the ball. You want the ball. But, if you’re having a game where you are getting one or two yards every time you carry, it’s like hitting your head against the wall and you don’t want the ball. You don’t want to do that.

“I never came out and said it, but I wanted to touch the ball every play. That’s the fun thing about being a quarterback. I didn’t want to make a stink about wanting to touch the ball every play. With the talent we had, I could not have been on the team and it would have been just as good.”

Winning helps curb that appetite for touches, a bit, too.

“Without a doubt, winning had a lot to do with it,” Wisnyai said. “It was a total team effort to win. I didn’t win nine games that year, Edgewood did. We had 60 or 70 guys at Edgewood that year and they were working hard at practice every day making us better.”

 

Support

For those who attended football games at Corlew Stadium in the 1980s and ’90s, there were a couple of fixtures. It was a given the elder Lou Wisnyai would be on the sideline as a member of the chain gang and Mary Wisnyai would be stationed on the 50-yard line, where she currently sits to watch her two grandsons.

Wisnyai understands he had a great support system in his family, which also includes his sister, Robin, and brother, Greg.

“My dad was my coach in midget league, but that was it,” Wisnyai said. “He was there mostly for baseball. He was harder on me than anybody else, but it made me better. I figured I’d better work at things so I didn’t have to listen to him.

“It meant a lot to play for him. He’s taught me a lot as I’ve gotten older. I’m still learning from him.

“I think my mom was a little bit more hard-nosed than most mothers,” Wisnyai continued. “She’d tell us to get up, we could be hurt after the game. But if we needed something or we were really hurt, she was the one who was there to baby us, so to speak.”

 

Choices

In pursuing his dream of playing for the Indians, Wisnyai chose to attend Gannon University on a baseball scholarship. His days on the

gridiron, as a player at least, were over.

“Looking back, I thought I was better at baseball,” Wisnyai said. “I thought if there was something going on after (high) school, it would be baseball. A lot of people say that was probably the wrong choice. My dad mentioned that football might have been the thing (I should’ve done). Even before the boys were born, I developed more of a passion for football than baseball. I’m really glad both (of my sons) put the pads on.”

At the time, choosing baseball may have been the right decision.

“There were no scholarship offers,” Wisnyai said. “I didn’t

get a whole lot of anything from anyone. But, like I said, I thought baseball was going to pan out.”

Not long into his baseball career at Gannon, an opportunity presented itself to return to the gridiron.

“When I started at Gannon, they didn’t have a football program,” he said. “My second year, they instituted football. I thought I would try out, but it had been two years since I had played. I was fully committed to baseball and trying to pursue that. Plus, with my schedule for baseball, my class work was difficult as it was.”

 

Coach Wisnyai

After graduating from Gannon, Wisnyai returned home. And made a return to the gridiron.

“My first year as a coach was at Ledgemont with Jay Corlew,” Wisnyai said. “I think that was 1991. The year after that, I approached Melaragno about joining his staff. They had a freshmen program at Edgewood and he brought me on as a freshman coach.

“I thought somewhere down the road, I would coach. I was not planning on it as soon as I did it. Like every kid, I was going to play in Cleveland Stadium. That’s what I thought, but things change.”

It wasn’t easy to be transition from athlete to coach at first.

“It was difficult at first,” Wisnyai said. “Younger coaches, you don’t want to say have earn the respect of high school students, but you want to try and be friends with them. I had known most of the kids at Edgewood from when I was in school. Then again, you don’t (want to be friends). You want to show them you’re the adult, you’re there for a reason and you know what you’re talking about.

“It was easier for me than some coaches who were there when I was there. I knew some of the boys and that made it easier. You’ve got to let them know that the friendship stops when you cross the lines (to the field).”

While coaching in those early years, Wisnyai married his high school sweetheart, Tammi, and the couple had two sons, Louie, a senior quarterback slated to start for the Warriors this fall, and Alex, a freshman quarterback for the Warriors.

“We just passed our 20th year in May,” Wisnyai said of being married to Tammi. “Dec. 4, 1984, is the day we started dating. She was a freshman and I was a sophomore. She was there every step of the way. She knew if she wanted to go to a game, (my family) was her ride. She spent more time with my parents than most girls do. There’s not a day goes by that I don’t say I’m lucky to have what I have.

“She’s kind of always been there for everything. She was an athlete so she knows what it takes to be an athlete. She can be harder on (our sons) than I can. I don’t think she’d trade a minute so far for anything.

“She won’t admit it, but I think I can say she was my biggest fan.”

After a few seasons with the Warriors, Wisnyai stepped away from coaching. He returned to the sideline after a brief respite, then stepped away again.

“I think I was out for about five years, then came back in Lance Hostetler’s first year,” Wisnyai said. “When I came back, I coached a year and couldn’t keep going because of my work schedule.”

Not being on a sideline didn’t sit well with Wisnyai. But he also learned something from it.

“At first, I missed it,” he said. “I really did. After a couple years being away, it was easier. I would still go and watch games. I think, being away a few years made me respect the game more.”

Now, while working nights at Millenium, Wisnyai is making his way back to coaching, once again at his alma mater.

“I have a renewed vigor for the game,” he said. “I have a chance to coach a team with both of my sonos on it. That had a lot to do with (returning to coach). I talked with Coach Dom (Iarocci) and he invited me out. He was going to approach me before I had the opportunity to ask.”

Coaching his sons will present some new wrinkles for Wisnyai, who will push Louie and Alex to be the best they can be.

“I try not to carry it on the way home,” Wisnyai said. “Most of the time, it doesn’t work. Being a dad, I want to see my sons succeed to their highest capability. They know how I am and that will be the case all the time. That’s where my wife comes in. She’s kind of the calming influence.”

Ettinger is a freelance writer from Ashtabula.