WILLIAMSPORT — An opportunity to move back to south central Ohio and take over a football program with tradition sounded like the perfect fit for Trent Olds.
“I wanted to move back to the area for family reasons, and Westfall is very close to the area I grew up in,” Olds said. “I went to Miami Trace, and Westfall is very similar to Miami Trace with the feel of the community and how much the school and the football program means to the community.”
Olds was unanimously approved by the Westfall Board of Education recently as the school’s new football coach.
“Our search community really liked three things about Trent,” Westfall athletic director Trevor Thomas said. “He has a passion for football, he wants to help build young men and instill character in them, both on and off the field, and he’s a great teacher.”
Olds, 27, is a 2007 graduate of Miami Trace High School and a 2011 graduate of Muskingum University.
He started his coaching career by serving a season at Muskingum as quality control coach. He then moved to southwest Ohio, where he served a season as defensive backs coach at Kings, two years as defensive coordinator of Goshen, one year as offensive coordinator at Norwood and this past season as an assistant coach at Mariemont.
Olds said three coaches have helped mold his coaching philosophy.
“I played for Jeff Conroy at Miami Trace, and he taught me a lot about life and was the reason why I wanted to go into coaching, so I could teach and help mold student-athletes,” he said. “I was an assistant under Chris Majors at Norwood, who is now an assistant at Moeller, and he did a lot for student-athletes. I learned a lot about giving back and helping to mold kids into young men.
“I worked this past season under Kurry Commins at Mariemont, where I learned a lot of technical and organizational aspects of running a football program. He got the most out of student-athletes, and did a lot to help them.”
Olds met with the team last Wednesday and talked about the type of program he wants to build at Westfall.
“We’re going to start by building strong relationships, with our student-athletes, parents, coaches, the biddy program and community members,” he said. “We want everyone to feel a part of this program and we’re going to do different things to make that a reality.
“When we take the field on Friday night, we expect our student-athletes to represent our community with class and play with pride. Our kids are going to hear a lot about the three pillars of our program, which are family and faith, academics and football. We want to develop our student-athletes into quality young men, who will succeed in the classroom, on the field and in life after school.”
Olds also talked to the team about the tradition of the football program, highlighting the program’s regular-season record of 101-19 from 2001-12.
“We have great tradition here at Westfall, and there is a hunger to bring Westfall football back to what it has been in the past from our administration, everyone in the school and the community,” he said. “We want to surround our kids with local coaches who understand what it means to compete for and win Pickaway County championships and SVC championships.
“I know the numbers in the program have been down for a few seasons, for whatever reason, and we need to get the athletes we have walking the halls and playing other sports to play football. The passion for sports and to have success is here. Our wrestling team won the SVC, our boys basketball team finished second in the conference, we have a quality baseball program, and our girls programs are pretty good.”
Olds talked about his philosophy on both sides of the football.
“I’m a big believer on offense of spreading the field out to run the football. We want to get our athletes the football in space,” he said. “We want to be a physical offensive unit and control the line of scrimmage, so we can run the football down hill. We’ll talk as a coaching staff and develop an offensive game plan that best fits our kids.
“Our defense is going to be based off a 4-3 scheme, and we’ll change fronts depending on the type of team we play. We want to control the box by having very physical linemen and linebackers.”
Olds is licensed as a K-12 special education and intervention specialist.
The Mustangs haven’t had a winning season since 2012. Olds becomes the program’s fifth coach in five seasons, and takes over for Shane Patterson, who led the Mustangs to a 5-15 record over the last two seasons.
Westfall hosts Teays Valley on Aug. 26 to open the season.
