The Trucker football program is just 78-231-1 since its last winning season in 1977, which has spanned nine different head coaches.

 

NORWALK- Change at the top is nothing new to followers of the Norwalk football program.

And in one of the earliest offseason changes in memory, those followers get to go through the process again after Jeff Cole resigned from the head coaching position after four seasons and a 10-30 mark.

That means the 2009 season for the Truckers will feature the 10th different head coach in the past 30 seasons, an average of three seasons per tenure.

Furthermore, it will mark the sixth different coach in the past 20 years and the third this decade.

Cole was hired April 15, 2005, 42 days after the resignation of Jordan Horowitz, who had been the head coach from 2000-04.

Cole came to Norwalk after spending the previous eight seasons at Crestline, where he compiled a 41-40 record before being non-renewed at the North Central Conference school a couple months before.

In his first season in 2005, the Truckers finished 2-8 and played mostly sophomores and juniors as the team replaced 16 seniors from a 5-5 team the previous year.

In 2006 the team improved slightly to 3-7, but expectations were set extremely high for the 2007 season as many of the sophomores who saw significant time in Cole’s first season had now produced six two-way, three-year starters.

The team got off to a 3-1 start, the best in 30 years, and, after a tough loss at Shelby, the Truckers were 3-2 when they traveled to Bellevue Athletic Field to take on the Redmen at a fellow Northern Ohio League school they had not tasted victory at in 58 years.

Norwalk hung on for a thrilling 28-24 victory, which would prove to be the highlight of Cole’s tenure, and the team was in prime position for the first winning season since 1977 with a 4-2 record.

In the next week, however, things took another turn for the worse for the Truckers.

They were hosting a 2-4 Upper Sandusky team on homecoming that was coming to town for a 75-minute bus ride off of a 72-13 loss to Tiffin Columbian the week before.

The end result was a shocking 21-13 loss to drop the team to 4-3. With powerhouses Columbian and Fostoria next on the schedule, the results weren’t shocking after the Truckers lost 41-14 and 36-22, respectively, to fall to 4-5 and again ruin any hopes of a winning season.

Norwalk then closed the season with a 34-0 win over Willard to finish 5-5, just the fourth non-losing record in the past 32 years.

This past fall, nothing went right for the Truckers after losing 37-36 in the final minute to Edison in the season opener. Decimated by injuries that included all of its captains in street clothes by the NOL opener in week 4, the Truckers were outscored 377-55 over the final nine weeks, as the team finished winless for just the second time in 40 years.

After the landmark win at Bellevue in week 6 of the 2007 season, the Truckers went 1-13 in Cole’s last 14 games on the sidelines.

Since finishing 7-3 in the 1977 season, the Trucker program has long been the worst in the area in compiling a 78-231-1 mark with just six top-half finishes in the NOL.

Norwalk is one of just three area schools with a state football championship, however. They went 11-1 and won the Class AA title in 1974 and, from 1974-77, compiled a 33-9 record with the school’s only two NOL titles in 1974 and 1976.