Crestwood’s Jake Eyerman reacts after making a play in Friday’s 20-2 victory over Rootstown.
Sheila Mathers/Special to Portage Sports

By Tom Nader

Publisher and Editor

Five years ago, Jack D’Amato sat alongside friends Rich McIntyre and Chris Eyerman to talk about football.

More specifically, a vision for what the next five years of Crestwood High School football could look like.

D’Amato was considering applying for the coaching vacancy at Crestwood, but before he did, he wanted to have a plan to rebuild the program’s numbers and culture.

The varsity roster size had dwindled to the low 20s and overall excitement for the program had fallen off.

The consensus from that conversation was that it was going to take a passionate effort to bring Crestwood football back.

Diligence in leadership. Genuine relationships. Consistent effort.

Comfortable with the support team around him, D’Amato applied for the job, was hired and immediately set forth to put their plan into action.

Everything has been moving forward ever since.

D’Amato’s team had 23 players in his first year as head coach in 2020. This season, the roster is up to 49 players.

The answer has not been any one specific thing, but the collection of many outreach efforts that have been coordinated by a collection of leaders invested in reaching the same goal together.

“We are very active with your youth and middle-school teams,” D’Amato said. “I was the 

Vice President of Crestwood Youth Football and Cheer from 2016 until this current season, and I live in the community, so I try to make it a point to know as many kids names and faces as possible. A coach walking by a third-grader at a gas station and saying, ‘Hey, Ollie, what’s been going on? Ready for the football season?,’ with a fist bump means the world to the kids — and us, too.

“We started with a  big vision, and we have kept going,” D’Amato added. “We’ve gotten a ton of buy in to get to this point and it wasn’t done alone. We wouldn’t be where we are today without Rich’s and Chris’ leadership, support and friendship.”

A story that makes D’Amato smile, while also providing a snapshot of how far the program has come, happened back during his first summer as the varsity head coach.

“We were in August practice and Coach ‘Mro’ (Mrozinski) from Hiram called and asked if he and his staff could come to a practice and just watch from the stands. Because of COVID, they didn’t have their team with them and just missed football and wanted to watch. That day they came, we had 16 players on the field practicing. I’m sure that is not what he was expecting when he made the original phone call. He said he was impressed with the pace and amount of coaching getting done with such low numbers.”

Despite the small roster, Crestwood played an entire varsity and JV schedule that season, which D’Amato said was a vital ingredient to the team’s development and commitment to improve.

The results began to pay off almost immediately, with the Devils winning the Chagrin Valley Conference championship the following season in 2021.

The impact has been from the top down, with numbers also growing throughout the youth program.

Registration numbers for the youth (Kindergarten through sixth grade) hovered in the 30s back in 2015 and have grown to 90 this season. And the program has also lessened the common drop-off point that programs typically experience at the middle-school level. All were key components to the high school team being able to play a freshman schedule last year for the first time in more than 12 years.

What once was a vision is now real life for D’Amato and his program.

Trust, though, that new visions have already been discussed to take the program to the next level. You will see those in the next five years.