By Dave Morrison
OAK HILL – First-year Oak Hill Coach Davon Marion still looks like he could suit up and play, even though he is just about a decade removed from his playing career, when he was a Division 2 All-American at Concord.
But he has some definite old-school principals when it comes to the game he loves.
He said as much himself after the Red Devils wrapped up the first week of actual field work under Marion with a joint practice with Midland Trail on the grass surface at John P. Duda Field.
Most area teams have switched to artificial turf, only a handful remain natural surface and three are in Fayette County.
“The turf looks nice, but this is where I become old school,” Marion said. “I believe in the elements, playing in the elements. If we play a team and it pours rain, and they play on turf and we have been practicing on wet grass all week, well, that’s part of football. Football was invented on grass, to be played on grass and with the elements to be a factor.
“I coached at Princeton the last six seasons. The turf is nice. If you ever get a chance to get turf, of course take it. But I’m not opposed to grass. They built us a new weight room building. It won’t look like Herbert Hoover’s but if you come in, put the work in, you can get everything you need out of it. That’s my mind set on it.”
Even his opinion on the new transfer rule trails off into the old school “win-with-what-we’ve-got” mentality.
“I’ve heard some (coaches) are out calling kids, that’s not me,” Marion said. “I want to win with the guys that are in my hallways. I won’t turn any kid down that reaches out to me that wants to play on our football team. ‘Yes, I would love to have you, yes come try out or be a part of our program.’ But as far as reaching out or direct messaging people, parents, that’s not me. I want to win with the kids who are home grown. I believe we can, and I believe that we will.”
Perhaps that’s because he played on a team coached but one of the true old school coaches, Eddie Souk Jr. at Mount Hope.
For Marion and his brothers, Desmond and Deon, growing up across the street from Municipal Stadium in Mount Hope offered an early introduction to the sport in the form of a wake-up call.
“That was the highlight of our late summer, listening to the high school football team clap, and make beats,” Marion said. “The whistles of the high school coaches at Mount Hope. That truly was the highlight of our summer. We’d wake up early, go watch those guys practice and we always wanted to be a part of it. Mount Hope is in me still.”
The old Stadium is still there, but largely vacant these days, as Mount Hope consolidated into Oak Hill not long after Marion graduated.
Now he will walk the sidelines at Oak Hill, and he is the one with the whistle, as the new head football coach at Oak Hill, just a few short miles down Route 19.
And he liked what he saw week one as he goes reshaping the Oak Hill football program.
“I thought we had a very productive week,” Marion said. “We learned a lot offensively and defensively. This is my first year being a head coach so trying to install a new offense and a new defense, still getting used to the players, and they are getting used to me, but for what it’s worth, I thought it was a productive week. We got to compete against someone other than ourselves.
“We were at Nicholas County (Thursday night) and got to go against Clay County, Nicholas County, Midland Trail and Summers. I thought we got better yesterday. And coach Moore (Jeremy Moore, of Midland Trail, a former Fayetteville star) was gracious enough to bring his guys over today. We cleaned up some mistakes. It was a good week for us.”
He hopes to make Oak Hill a name among the football schools. But he knows a football program, like Rome, was not built overnight.
“I want to see (Oak Hill) rise, somewhere in that top 10 in triple A,” Marion said. “I get it. I have been around coaching long enough to know nothing is done overnight. And I’d be lying if I told people his is easy, that winning a state title is going to be easy. I’ve got an uphill battle turning the program around, giving these kids something to look forward to, winning some games, having consistent winning seasons. That’s my goal. I believe we have the talent to do it over the next several years.”
He is installing a zone-read scheme favored in the game currently. He wants to install a physical defense. And he will do it with it within the framework of his definition of football.
“Herat and hustle,” Marion said describing football in his mind. “It will teach you the ups and downs of life. Never get too high. Never get too low. Sometimes it’s time to yell at one another but in an encouraging way. If you can put your heart into something, execute it and want to be great at it you can. And if you show hustle and dedication to something, your heart work will pay off.”
He said his college coaches fueled his desire to get into coaching.
“I had great college coaches,” Marion said. “I had Mile Keller who is the coach at Glenville State now. The Garin Justice, who is the offensive line coach at SMU now. Steve Adams was my DB coach. I got close with him. He’s the DC (defensive coordinator) at Norfolk State, a Division I-AA in Virginia Beach. Paul Price, who just left West Virginia State to help (former Princeton coach Wes Eddy) at Berkeley Springs.
“There were some really great coaches I had in college,” Marion said. “Getting to build relationships with those guys and getting to learn football in a different way. Mount Hope helped me, but college expanded me. That’s where I got my love for coaching from.”
But it was the high school days, with Souk, that got him started on his road to being an All-American.
“He pushed me to the limit,” Marion said. “Him and Jim Maynor, our old basketball coach there, who was also the weight-lifting teacher in high school, they pushed me to the limit, and I learned hard work. And that’s what I’m hoping to bring here.”
The Red Devils open the season hosting Nicholas County on Aug. 25.l.
