Crooksville football has its new leader: 'Sometimes you have to roll with the flow'

The new football coach in Crooksville would be a name quite familiar.

Nathan Van Meter a 2006 Ceramic graduate takes the position of the measuring head coach in the school on Tuesday joining the list of four coaches in a decade. He takes the place of Gage Lotozo, who stepped down last week due to health problems.

Van Meter has been involved in coaching multiple sports at his high school, and currently and since 2020, he has been the head golf coach at his Alma-mater. He also is a former head baseball coach here, and is presently an assistant girls basketball coach under Matt Jones.

He acts as both a high school physical education teacher/health educator, additionally, in the same year, he is teaching the school Commercial Driver’s License (CDL) program and also the Workforce-Based Educational program collaborated by the Mid-East Vocational School.

He and wife Nikkia, It will be 11 years when married next year but has been together for 20 years has also four children, daughters Alexia who attends Crooksville as a junior, Bronx who is in the fifth grade, Boston in the fourth grade and Baire in the third grade.

Still, it’s just right that he together with was designated to assume yet another new position, albeit one which is not under ideal conditions at all.

“Certainly, I am a man who wears many hats,” Van Meter said on Tuesday. <(The district) came to me and said I could be the man for this job at this time. When the district comes to you, and the school board, they have an idea of what I can bring to the table. I care about this community.

Superintendent Kevin Smith, a head coach before his administrative promotion, said he was ‘thrilled’ to have Van Meter in as the new coach , stating his dedication and promotion of every part of the school system.

“I am confident that with his leadership skills in fetching students and commitment to this community means that the tradition of victory in Crooksville football will continue,” Smith said.

Van Meter has colorful background as a football player and a coach, He is a two-year three way starter for Crooksville in mid-2000s and the previous coaching experience at the Crooksville and Miller. He was on the varsity staff a Miller for five years, the final four of which with Shawn Bartley.

He then proceed to categorically state that this was not a position that he sought, a position that aligned with the district’s defense of Lotozo as a valued asset who had to leave Coaching a program which he was in the process of developing.

Van Meter said that he learned about weight room culture from Lotozo and added that has become massive in the last two years. He also claimed the position of the team’s defensive coordinator.

“Gage going down, nobody wants to see that” Van Meter said. All that was left was support him, and support him I did. Because of his background and certainly knowing how to run a program and actually getting to watch him run it, you have to respect a guy like that. Such a man is not easy to find and it was very heartening on July 21 to meet the boys for the first time and then lose him.

He further said, “I had a one on one with him,” referring to Van Meter. The reason they are here you are not is because I am not ego motivated, I’m a guys who loves the community, who loves the kids, unlike you I wasn’t sitting back in the boonies waiting for something like this to happen to our young people.

The Ceramics staged a passing exercise on Tuesday night and this was the first time that Van Meter got an opportunity to view the new outfit in a close manner. He has devoted most of the recent days studying Lotozo’s system along with jargons that are already known to the players. He is expecting to be aromalized by august camp.

The program he inherits has not had a winning record since 2010 or a playoff win since 2001 but gets back the majority of a 3-7 team in 2023 that began with a 3-0 mark.

That core of players was freshmen and sophomores, and the Owls’ most valuable player, Brayson Hill, is a catalytic multidimensional quarterback as well as many of his teammates.

They conducted a passing scrimmage on Tuesday which was Van Meter’s first in coaching.

Van Meter added that this situation is not very comfortable for anyone to be in. On the district it’s not easy, on the players it’s not easy. I have been on both sides of this, sometimes there’s nothing you can do about it, you have to go with the flow.

Van Meter was the safety and quarterback during his high school years where he took the Ceramics to the year 2004, where they scored 8-2 and got their last playoff before the COVID-19 sag. He also departed as one of the most outstanding baseball players in the program’s history , the sport in which he later on played as a pitcher at Muskingum University.

He does not bother about dreaming and aspiring too high, not even as far as the future is concerned.

“As I said to the staff I don’t know what tomorrow’s plan is, the weekly plan and adjust and go from there,” Van Meter said. “I have not had this football voice in I think about five or six years. ”