'You have to keep fighting'
Faith, family and football guide the life of Scecina's Ott Hurrle
Known for his passion for the game and his loyalty to his players, Scecina head football coach Ott Hurrle talks with one of his players during practice. (Photo by John Shaughnessy)
By John Shaughnessy
Head football coach Ott Hurrle’s eyes narrow as he watches the two high school football players line up across from each other, digging their cleats into the mud and wet grass of the practice field on a gray October afternoon.
As an assistant coach blows a whistle, the defensive lineman and offensive lineman crash into each other, their cleats churning and spraying mud in their
split-second battle of power, balance, determination and faith.
Yes, faith.
After 35 years of coaching at Father Thomas Scecina Memorial High School in Indianapolis, Hurrle believes that so much of football—and life—is about faith and the tests that it brings.
At 60, Hurrle knows the lessons about life are there in the no-glory weightlifting sessions of the off-season, in the body-sapping, two-a-day practices in the searing heat of August, in a tough, one-point loss in late September—and all the other ways that the bonds of a team and teammates are tested in a season.
He also knows that the lessons about life are there in the shared dreams that fuel all the sacrifice and hard work—to put your heart and your soul on the line for something bigger than you.
And he also knows something that most of his players fortunately know little about—that the lessons of football will help you later in life, even possibly in a moment when you try to recover from a personal loss that blindsides you and leaves you feeling that your heart and your soul are being crushed.
It’s an experience that Hurrle has faced, an experience that eventually showed him forever the healing and sustaining power of family, faith and friendship that guides his life.
‘You have to keep fighting’
It happened in 1979, a time when Hurrle was a young assistant coach at Scecina—where he graduated in 1970 before earning his college degree at Butler University in Indianapolis.
At both schools, Hurrle played center on the football team. He stood all of 5-feet,
7-inches in height and weighed no more than 170 pounds when he played, physical features that led people to question how he could be an offensive lineman in college. But he had the toughness, the technique and the tenacity to play.
“Football taught me and teaches kids so many lessons,” says Hurrle, who coaches at the smallest Catholic high school in the archdiocese with a football team. “Football is always competitive. There’s never a play you can take off. It taught me how to get knocked down and get back up. Even when you’re going against someone bigger, you have to keep fighting every play. It’s a lesson you learn in life. You get knocked down sometimes, but every day you have to get up and go on.”
He lived that approach. Then he received a phone call in 1979 that devastated him and challenged that foundation to his life.
“I got a call here at school,” he recalls. “We were getting ready for a fish dinner fundraiser.”
The call was about a traffic accident involving his youngest sister, Eileen, and his mother, also named Eileen. His sister died in the accident. His mother was seriously injured.
“That was a hard time,” he says. “It was just hard to understand why. There were times I didn’t feel like moving on. The people here were a source of comfort. And the lessons from football and the values my parents instilled in all of us helped me get through it.”
A matter of pride and tradition
It was one of the defining times that has expanded Hurrle’s concept of family. He grew up as the fifth of nine children, and he has always stayed loyal to his parents, his siblings and the generations that have followed, but his sense of family also extends to the family he has formed at Scecina.
“You go into his home, and all you see are family photos and Scecina photos and memorabilia,” says Joseph Therber, Scecina’s president. “He is all about family, friends and Scecina.”
“He just doesn’t help the football players at Scecina, he helps other students,” says Connor Tooley, a senior at Scecina who plays football. “He does more for this school than I think anyone can ever imagine.”
Bill Lynch is among the legion of people who believe that Hurrle is the embodiment of Scecina and the best of everything it represents on the field and off the field—keeping the faith, never backing down, making the most of what you have, respecting the pride and the tradition of those who came before you.
“When you think of Catholic schools and Catholic school football, you think of Ott,” says Lynch, a graduate of Bishop Chatard High School in Indianapolis who played against Hurrle in high school and later took snaps from him when he was a quarterback at Butler. “His heart has always been at Scecina. It’s important to him that it’s successful and that the kids get the positive experience he had when he was a student.”
Yet, his fans say that Hurrle would be the first to shy away from such praise, and to take it humbly.
“Our team was ranked number one in Class A earlier in the season,” Therber says. “I’ve seen how something like that affects people. But Ott is the kind of individual who walks through the hall and doesn’t draw any attention to himself because of it.”
In terms of credit, Hurrle prefers to give it to his teachers—the ones he had growing up at home, the ones he had on the football field as a player at Scecina. Any conversation with him about his life usually turns to his mentor and his head football coach when he was a senior, the late Ken Leffler.
“Other than my father, he was the major influence in my life,” Hurrle recalls. “I was a senior in his first year as head coach. The seniors on our team stayed very close to him. He made everyone feel important and had an incredible sense of humor.”
Hurrle became an assistant coach to Leffler after he graduated from Butler, and they worked together for nearly 15 years. When Leffler died 40 days after being diagnosed with cancer, Hurrle mourned him with the same sense of family that he had for the deaths of his sister and his father.
“Ott was there every day to see Kenny,” recalls Bill Bevan, a longtime friend. “They were that close.”
The next football season—in 1988—Hurrle took over as head coach of the Scecina team. It was another time when he got knocked down.
Keeping the faith
Scecina’s record during Hurrle’s first season as head football coach was two wins and eight losses. The 1989 season resulted in the same finish.
At one point during that first season, Lynch remembers meeting Hurrle’s mother—who just turned 90 in June—after church one Sunday in the parking lot. She talked to Lynch about how she was praying for her son. Lynch told her that it was just a matter of time before her son would do well.
That belief was shared by Scecina’s principal at the time, Larry Neidlinger. He gave Hurrle something that the coach still cherishes and mentions today—his support.
The next two seasons—1990 and 1991—Scecina won state championships in football.
Bevan recalls the joy that Hurrle showed during the celebrations that followed both state titles.
He’s also quick to point out other details about his friend. That Hurrle tries to receive holy Communion daily. That the team prays before and after every game, win or lose. That Hurrle has spoken at spiritual retreats for Scecina seniors, talking about his life, his personal losses, and his family, friends and faith.
Perhaps the best tribute about Hurrle comes from Franciscan Sister Lavonne Long, who ministered at Scecina for 45 years before retiring in 2010. When she heard that The Criterion was working on a story about Hurrle, the now-90-year-old sister wrote down her thoughts about her friend and called the reporter to share her appreciation of Hurrle.
“Ott has touched my life by his kindness,” she says. “He’s a man of deep faith who has influenced so many lives.”
Connor Tooley—one of the senior captains on this year’s team—shares a story from his playing days as a freshman when nearly everything he did was wrong, frustrating other players.
“He just pulled me aside and said, ‘You just need to calm down and play the way you are coached,’ ” Connor recalls. “When everyone was counting me out, Coach was one of the few people to be there for me and bring me back to the game. That’s stayed with me since freshman year.
“He’s the best coach I’ve ever had in any sport. I really hope that one day I have half the passion about the things I’m doing that he has about football. Our team loves him.”
A reason to dream
Hurrle’s passion will be on display on the sidelines on Oct. 19 when Scecina plays its first game in the Class A state championship football tournament of the Indiana High School Athletic Association.
“Our goal is to be playing on Thanksgiving weekend,” says Hurrle, referring to that Friday and Saturday when state football championships in five classes will be determined at Lucas Oil Stadium in Indianapolis.
Last year, Scecina’s football team lost in the Class A state championship game.
That goal of winning a state championship is captured in the message of one of the two large posters that hang on the wall behind Hurrle’s desk: “Without dreams, there is no reason to work. Without work, there is no reason to dream.”
“I just think that’s very appropriate for any type of competitor, for any part of life,” he says.
The other poster proclaims, “Scecina Crusader football. Be part of the tradition.”
“There’s a lot of camaraderie that takes place in a football locker room and on the field that’s like nothing else,” he says. “It just unites people. I just hope the kids enjoy the experience and learn positive qualities they can carry on in life. I tell them you need to appreciate the short time you have. Even if you play in college, you don’t play with the kids you grew up with. You’ll never experience that same type of unity.”
Unless, perhaps, you find a place that becomes a home.
“Scecina means a lot to me,” he says. “Sure, we have discipline, but it’s the care and the love and the comfort we offer our kids. It was the same when I was a student here, and it’s never changed.
“You wouldn’t stay at a place if you didn’t like it and what it stands for.” †
