By Tom Nader

Publisher and Editor

Matt Furino has always been emotionally connected to football.

It’s been that way ever since he can remember.

The love dates back to when he was a toddler, watching NFL games on TV with his father, who hesitated to let his young son play the sport.

So Furino was relegated to backyard battles with family and friends, and he played every chance he got.

By sixth grade, Furino’s father, John, released his son to the gridiron.

In part because he felt his son was old enough to handle the physicality of the sport, but also in part because his son had been relentless in his pursuit to finally put on the helmet and pads.

“I fell in love with it in 2 seconds,” Furino said. “I finally got to hit, run, work. It was the greatest thing in my life. I always had a lot of energy as a kid and football was a big release for me. I loved everything about it.”

Forty years later, nothing has changed.

Well, actually, maybe it has.

Furino’s love for football is even deeper now than it was then.

Back then, it was just a sport with a winner and a loser.

Along the way, it became so much more than that.

It shaped Furino’s life.

It gave him a career.

A career that has included three different stints as the head coach of his alma mater Field, 108 wins, league championships and an everlasting list of meaningful moments and loving relationships with players and coaches that will forever be nested warmly in his heart.

“Football has given me everything. Football has made me a better everything,” Furino said. “It has made me a better husband, a better father, a better son, a better teacher. I didn’t expect that. When I first started coaching, my mind was just on proving everybody wrong. I wanted to prove that we could win and that we could win a league title.

Coach Matt Furino with his family after winning his 100th career game with a victory over Mogadore to open he 2024 season.

“As you age, you gain perspective, too, though. I still have the fire to win. Nobody is more competitive than I am, but I also realize now how coaching makes me a better person. It affects every decision I make, because I want to live the lifestyle that I am telling my players is important.

“You try to be better every day because somebody other than God might be watching. Maybe it’s a youth player, a middle school player, a student in class, my daughters, colleagues. When you realize that, you start to live out what you’re saying. It changes you. You become the person you’re talking about. You become the person your dad told you that you should be.”

These are the types of messages Field football players have received for the 20 years Furino’s three separate eras have covered.

Gameplans, strategies and coaching have always been layered with deeper conversations designed to not only prepare the Falcons to compete under the lights on Friday nights, but to also prepare them for life that waits for them after high school as husbands, fathers and hard working employees.

Starting in the fall, that message will be delivered to players from a different voice.

Furino announced his resignation at the conclusion of the 2024 season.

A FOUNDATION OF LOVE

Furino smiles when he speaks about his childhood.

Furino’s mother Kathy hugs her son.

The smile only gets bigger, and a sparkle enters his eye, when he talks about how involved his parents have been throughout his life.

“I have been really, really blessed,” he said. “Growing up, my home life was incredible. My parents were always there for me, and they always told me that they loved me and were proud of me. They gave me a special childhood.”

The Furino family lived off Ranfield Road on Morley Road in Brimfield Township — and it placed Furino near many friends.

That meant a lot of time in backyards playing every game imaginable and some games created only through imagination.

When Furino and his friends were called into the house to eat, he would eat as fast as he could so that he could get back outside as quickly as possible.

The games were waiting for him, after all.

“Kickball, football, baseball, you name it, and we were playing it,” he said. “If we got bored with something, we would make up games just to have something to do. We would ride our bikes down 43 and into Kent to meet up with other friends to play games.

“Most of my really good friends that I am still really close with now are the same ones I was with then. That’s what it was like being a kid growing up in the 70’s and 80’s.”

Furino is the younger of John and Kathy Furino’s two sons.

Furino’s older brother, Jim, is a diesel mechanic, who moved to Texas when Furino was a high school sophomore and has lived there for the last 40 years.

Matt Furino walks across the field on Senior Night with his mother (Kathy) and father John.

Furino’s mother was the Supervisor of Financial Aid at Kent State University for 26 years and Furino’s father was a barber, but one of his true passions was music.

He founded Johnny Fay and the Blazers, a rock-a-billy group formed at a time when rock-and-roll music was taking over the American airwaves.

“He stopped playing when my brother and I were born,” Furino said. “He felt it was important to find a more stable job to help support our family.”

Just like football has found Furino throughout his life, music found John once more, too.

Nearly 50 years later, unexpectedly, albums by Johnny Fay and the Blazers began to sell overseas.

At 70 years old, the phone rang with agents wanting to book him for shows throughout Europe to capitalize on the new wave of popularity. He not only went to rock, now 82 years old, John still leads the group to play a few gigs every year.

At the Furino household, dinner, without exception, was at 7 p.m.

Matt Furino poses in his Field Middle School football uniform.

Sundays, after the regular church service, the day was reserved for Grandma Rose Furino, who would host the family for a regular dinner gathering.

“God was the center, family was next and for me and dad, sports were right after that,” a smiling Furino said.

Furino attended St. Patrick’s in Kent, then began high school at Hoban.

“I always wanted to go to Field, and I begged every day, because I had so many friends there, but my dad wanted me to have a Catholic education.”

However, in the middle of his freshman year, Furino transferred to Field and graduated in the Class of 1986.

And nobody became bigger fans of the Falcons than John and Kathy Furino.

“My mom and dad were great, which makes it hard to see kids without good home lives,” Furino said. “I can only be empathetic, because I have no experience with that. My parents came to every game they could while I was playing or coaching. They were always in the stands. They put their lives on my schedule, and I can never thank them enough for that.”

BECOMING MR. FURINO AND COACH FURINO

At one point, Furino never thought that he would be at the front of a classroom as a teacher, and he never thought that he would be on the sideline as a football coach.

Matt Furino shown in 1993 as an assistant football coach at Field.

“My mom and dad sat me down, and my dad told me to find something that I like to do and that I was good at, because then somebody will pay you for it,”  Furino said. “I was good at math, and I liked sports a lot and from that point on I never looked back in 34 years.”

Especially when his first job randomly placed him right back at home.

Furino was hired by the State of Ohio to oversee the first year of the math proficiency testing, and he marked on his paperwork that he would go anywhere.

The luck of the draw placed the recently graduated Falcon back at Field for a nine-week assignment.

It reconnected him with principal and one-time Field football coach Gino Calcei.

“He was and still is one of my favorite people of all time. I was deathly afraid of him, but I knew I could ask him for anything,” Furino said.

The next summer, Furino appeared in line to land a teaching job at Green. He had been invited back for a second interview, but Calcei seemed to have other plans.

Field High School football coach Gino Calcei, who also served as the middle school principal at Field.

“I had listed Mr. Calcei as a reference, and I don’t know this for sure, but I think (Green) reached out to him to learn more about me. Mr. Calceil called me a couple of days before that second interview and told me that there was a Math opening at Field and that he thought I would be a good fit for it, and that I would have an opportunity to coach football and baseball, too.

“I remember him telling me that I need to call Green and tell them that I am sorry, but I already have a job,” a laughing Furino said. “I asked him if I could have some time to think, and he said, ‘Sure, call me back today.’ The more I thought about it, I had just gotten married at 22 while I was still in college, I needed a job, it was at my alma mater. I called him right back and I signed my school contract, football contract and baseball contract all on the same day.”

Just like that, Matt Furino was Mr. Furino and Coach Furino.

THREE CHAPTERS

Furino has been the head coach of the Falcons on three separate occasions.

The first spanned 1996 through 2007.

The second was 2012 through 2015.

And the third began in 2020 and rolled through the recently completed 2024 season.

It is far from what would be considered a typical coaching timeline, but it is evidence of how special Furino is and how well respected he is by the district and its players.

Most coaches are let go for reasons a district would not welcome them back or a coach leaves to take a position at an entirely different school.

Matt Furino with his grandson Grayson after winning the 2024 opener over Mogadore, which was also Furino’s 100th career win.

For Furino, the times he left the position centered around being available for his family and children doing important times in their lives, and he resigned in good standing.

And the times the district has needed a steadying, trusted voice to resurrect the program in numbers and competitiveness, they have turned back to Furino to be the lighthouse.

Furino’s beacon, which is a perfect blend of competitive fire, accountability and life lessons, has made a profound impact on players in measurable ways on the field, but also immeasurable ways off the field.

“I am ultra competitive and you are not going to meet someone who likes to win more than me, but even still, some of our worst years that we had records wise were some of our best years together as a team,” Furino said. “Winning is a huge part of what we wanted to do, but we always wanted to teach kids what my parents had taught me, and we had the time to do it. Players are with us seven days a week, and hours at a time, then you add in the classroom time together. Knowing that, we always wanted to approach the job with enthusiasm for the chance to better their lives or to improve their outlook on life.”

On game days, Furino was always his biggest critic, but one other loving and respected critic was always close by.

It was common for Furino’s father to keep a steno pad with him during games to take notes, then would share his thoughts with his son after the game.

“It was with love, but he was always the tough one after games,” Furino said. “He would have notes about how we had contain in the first quarter, but the team still got around us. He had a curiosity about the game and wanted to have a conversation about it. My mom was the easy one after games. No matter what happened in the game, she would always say that I did great. If I was playing, if I had two interceptions or a fumble, it was the same thing. If I was coaching and made some mistakes and we lost, it was the same thing. In her eyes, the game always went great.”

Furino and his wife Rita, along with their two daughters, following a football game.

As a coach, Furino blended his parent’s personality traits into his coaching philosophy.

He was tough on his expectations and unforgiving in his accountability, but there was always room for him to tell his team how much he appreciated and loved them.

He always needed his team to feel that. It’s what he has always felt from his parents.

And exactly why he has lived and coached the way he has.

Emotionally connected.

It’s been that way ever since he can remember.