Bob Lutz: New Hutchinson football coach Ryan Cornelsen isn’t looking back

Ryan Cornelsen grew up on Liberal’s football field and tracks in Liberal, watching his father, Gary, create a masterpiece.

The Redskins won four state football championships and played in seven consecutive title games from 1991-97 and Ryan was a player on the last four of those teams. Liberal also won 13 consecutive boys state track and field titles and nine girls championships under Gary. Oh, and added another state title in both boys and girls track and field when he was the defacto head coach, after he had officially “retired.”

So let’s give him 28 state championships – Liberal has won 35 in its history – in 13 years of coaching and call it a day.

Ryan saw it all. He was in awe of it all. It’s why he became a coach.

“Those Liberal days impacted me a lot,” he said. “It was exciting and it was important to that community. It was a big deal. And I think that ever since high school, I’ve been looking for that environment.”

That’s why Cornelsen is in Hutchinson, in his first season. Right now, he’s known as the guy who has bitten off replacing Randy Dreiling, who won seven state championships in 17 seasons and left for St. Thomas Aquinas last season after compiling a 160-39 record in Hutch.

Dreiling, like Gary Cornelsen, is a Kansas coaching legend.

Now let’s see what becomes of Ryan, 36.

He kick-started his career with successful stops at La Crosse, where he was 53-13 in six seasons, then at Hays, where he took over a program that had marginal success and won 35 of 47 games in five years.

Cornelsen was building something special at Hays and it was tough for him to leave.

“Things were going well there,” he said. “We were able to really get some improvements to facilities and we probably had our best team coming back this season. But I just felt like Hutch was a good fit. You never really know how hard it is to leave a place until you’ve got to make that decision. It was hard, but that’s part of this profession. We felt like Hutchinson was a good fit for our family.”

The Salthawks opened this season with high expectations, which is nothing new to Hutch. But let’s just say the team got off to an ominous start, not only losing to Olathe South 24-2, but losing quarterback Turner Wintz to an injury.

Meanwhile, linebacker and running back Colby Turner, who according to Cornelsen is the team’s best player, is out for the season with a torn anterior cruciate ligament.

Wintz’s backup, Conor Craig, also was hurt and could be lost for the season. That meant that sophomore Canyon Maldonado had to play quarterback during the second half and Cornelsen said he would start Friday’s game against Newton, too.

“Our quarterback (Wintz) got hurt on the first play of the game,” Cornelsen said. “He played through the first half, but then came to me and said, ‘I can’t throw and I can’t run, but I can hand it off.’”

It was a tough start to the season. Especially because all eyes are on Cornelsen to see if he can come close to duplicating Dreiling’s long-term success. The key there is long term; Cornelsen is in this thing for the long haul.

“We’re working extremely hard here to develop kids at not just the varsity level, but at all levels,” Cornelsen said. “We want to try to continue the tradition here.”

The Dreiling years are fresh, of course. Cornelsen knew there would be comparisons. He knew what he was getting into.

“But I’ve never really been too concerned about what a job was before I got there,” he said. “Everybody knows about the Salthawks tradition. That’s something that was exciting for me to come here and be a part of. There are big shoes to fill and you can never fill those. But we want to carry on the tradition that was instilled here.”

To help with that, Cornelsen is leaning on his dad, who helped him coach at Hays and has come along to Hutchinson. Gary spends the football season with his son’s family, living in their house, then returns to Amarillo, Texas, where he has been since retiring from Liberal. He’s coached at three Amarillo high schools since because once you’re a coach, you’re always a coach.

“I helped Ryan his last two years at Hays and now this year in Hutchinson,” said Gary, 63, who coaches the Salthawks’ running backs and defensive ends. “I’m sure coming here wasn’t an easy decision for him because he really had a good team coming back at Hays. But I think he feels like he has a good relationship with the athletic director (Eric Armstrong). That had something to do with it. Plus, I think he was ready for a new challenge.”

And he definitely has one, especially with the early injuries and the fact that Hutchinson plays in Division I of the AV-CTL, arguably the toughest football league in the state.

“We had a rough first game,” Ryan said.

There won’t be many easy ones.

“One of our two best players is out for the season and the other one, we don’t know how long he’s going to be out,” Gary said. “We’ve been really unlucky so far. When you lose your leaders, you’re kind of hunting and pecking for a while.”

Hutchinson hasn’t been forced to hunt and peck for a while. But with the Cornelsens is charge, Hutch is in good hands.

This story was originally published September 12, 2014 at 3:08 PM with the headline "Bob Lutz: New Hutchinson football coach Ryan Cornelsen isn’t looking back."