Bob Lutz: Championship finally in reach for veteran coach Tom Audley

Tom Audley has waited a long time to get here.

He has taken Andover Central to the playoffs in 13 of his 14 years as the Jaguars’ coach. But never this far, never to a championship game.

And though he hates making anything about coaching personal, he can’t help but take a step back from this one.

“You do start to wonder if you’re ever going to get into that position,” the 54-year-old Audley said. “It starts to get into your head. We had some chances, some teams I thought were good enough to get to this game or even to win this game. But we just never followed through.”

Andover Central (10-2) will take on defending Class 4A-I champion Bishop Miege on Saturday in Topeka.

Audley likes his team because it’s a team. He doesn’t take such things for granted anymore.

“We’ve got some talent (quarterback Peyton Huslig, running back Jordan Birch, receiver Darraja Parnell) and that always makes me smarter,” he said. “But the biggest thing is that these guys have bought in. They all have the same goals, want the same thing. That’s not all that common in this day and age.”

Audley said distractions, especially from social media, can adversely affect high school athletes. He sees it more and more.

“We kind of live in a society that’s centered around one’s self,” he said.

So what used to be common — for a bunch of high school football players to come together as a team — can’t be taken for granted.

“These guys like each other and and I think they have seen the potential and that we have some pretty good pieces,” Audley said. “Our coaching staff has done a great job of pushing them to get better. It’s all about how we do, not how I do.”

Andover Central knocked off Topeka Hayden 28-2 in the 4A-I semifinals last week, just five weeks after losing to Hayden 38-29 in the opening game of district competition.

“They really laid it on us in the first half of that first game and we didn’t do anything,” Audley said. “They came out and ran all over us. They ran 73 plays and we ran 39 and that’s not a very good recipe for success.”

It was a low point that Audley, as coaches are trained to do, turned into a teaching opportunity.

“If we want to go somewhere in the playoffs — and we’ve been talking about the playoffs with this group the whole year — then we’re going to have to get a lot better. That became our mantra,” he said.

Audley coached for five years at Andover from 1997-2001, taking the Trojans to the playoffs three times.

When it was announced that the Andover school district was going to open a second high school, Audley was interested in the football job.

He admits, though, that it was an awkward time.

“Everything at Andover was already established,” Audley said. “I thought it was an opportunity to build a program, to go somewhere and build an identity on how we did things.”

All these years later, Audley is the only coach Andover Central has known.

“If I had any thoughts about getting out of it, I think this year’s team has changed my mind,” Audley said. “I enjoy doing it and I wouldn’t mind someday being a really old coach.”

The grind, though, is palpable, especially for Audley. He’s not a P.E. teacher or a weights instructor like many coaches. He teaches six biology classes every day and perceives that there is less and less appreciation for teachers.

“We’ve been pretty beaten up over the last eight or 10 years,” Audley said. “Teachers used to be looked up to and that’s not the case nowadays. There are a lot of good people in education. But whether it’s coming from Topeka or it’s just a general consensus, there’s a perception that we’re just not doing a good-enough job.”

Audley is outspoken, direct and appreciative of those who have influenced him, especially former Goddard coach Farrell Jones, for whom Audley coached from 1984-87.

“That guy gave me a lot and he was really a mentor,” Audley said. “He’s the guy that made me think I needed to be a head coach, the guy who got me to clinics and taught me football.”

It’s something he’s tried to pass down. Audley is a serious man who takes his job to heart. When he says he’s not in coaching to win games, but to influence young people he’s not just providing lip service.

“This week and dealing with all the press and stuff hasn’t been that much fun,” Audley said. “It’s part of the job, I guess, but the parts I enjoy is when I get out there and have practice and we can just teach and work on stuff and try to find ways to score and to stop people from scoring.”

Audley is relishing an opportunity to do that in preparation for Andover Central’s first state football championship game. It’s his first, too. But, as he likes to say, this isn’t about him.

This story was originally published November 27, 2015 at 10:27 AM with the headline "Bob Lutz: Championship finally in reach for veteran coach Tom Audley."