New coach hopes to build on Dalton football tradition
Ray Leek has been hired as the head football coach at Dalton High School, replacing Broc Dial. Leek has previously been a head coach at Mapleton and Cambridge.
Dalton’s football team has established itself as a legitimate state power. The Bulldogs showed that beyond a shadow of a doubt last year, rolling to the Division VII state championship game in dominant fashion.
With that, though, often comes change. That was the case this offseason, as head coach Broc Dial left Dalton for Tuslaw. In Dial’s place is Ray Leek, who coached the past four seasons at Cambridge.
Though Leek’s squad was winless a year ago, Cambridge made the playoffs in three of his four seasons and weathered the COVID storm. Now he takes over a Dalton program where expectations will be at an all-time high.
“I think it’s a good thing to have expectations, and people have those for a reason,” Leek said. “We’re going to continue those expectations and continue the rich tradition Dalton has had and continues to have, and we’re going to build on it.”
As could be expected in most cases after a season like the Bulldogs had this past fall, there will be some big graduation hits to accompany the coaching change. The Bulldogs, though, will not be depleted.
While players like Greyson Siders, Colin Pearson and Jace Eberly are moving on, their names etched in Dalton lore, others like Sammy Tomlinson, Coy Wenger and Brady Hignight should still be around to usher in a new era under Leek.
The returning group knows what it takes to win at that level, and the leadership of returning upperclassmen will help smooth the transition between coaching staffs. Also in the Bulldogs’ favor, they didn’t just win last year. They dominated.
After a 14-7 season-opening loss to eventual Division VI state champion Kirtland, the Bulldogs reeled off 13 wins before finally falling 38-0 to Maria Stein Marion Local in the Div. IV state championship game. In between, the Bulldogs went 7-0 in the Wayne County Athletic League, winning by an average score of 47-8. They then won their first five playoff games by a combined 243-65 before running into Marion Local.
For those not deeply familiar with Ohio high school football, Kirtland and Marion Local win state titles the way other programs win early-season nonleague games. Minus the perennial juggernauts, Dalton wasn’t challenged last year, with one exception.
That would be Norwayne, the one Wayne County Athletic League team to give the Bulldogs a run. Norwayne leans toward state power more than any other WCAL squad, though, so that might have been expected.
“I’m pretty familiar with the WCAL,” Leek said. “It’s a real competitive league with a lot of real good football teams, great coaches, great athletes. I look forward to competing in the WCAL.”
The Alliance High School product who played collegiately at Mt. Union and Walsh University has been coaching for more than a decade. His first head coach job came at Mapleton in 2019. He left that a year later for Cambridge.
At Cambridge he ran an up-tempo, spread-style offense but will do at Dalton what the talent calls for and allows.
“Coming in to Dalton, I’m going to tailor that (style) to our offense; I’m going to get the ball in our playmakers’ hands and make sure they can be playmakers,” he said. “You can’t just say, ‘This is the offense I run.’”
Leek’s earliest and maybe biggest challenge will be finding a place to live. The area is in the midst of a housing shortage, and the Bulldogs’ new coach is well aware of that fact.
“I’ve heard all about that,” he said. “I look forward to hopefully finding a house and enjoying the community. My kids are going to be Bulldogs.”