Brent Besancon selected as next Madison football coach
MADISON TOWNSHIP — Madison has found its guy.
On Monday morning, Madison Athletic Director Doug Rickert announced in a news release that Brent Besancon is the six-member search committee's choice to be the Rams' new football coach.
Besancon, a Smithville graduate, has been submitted for board approval to take over the football program and the matter will be voted upon Wednesday.
Besancon is a veteran coach with 10 years of experience as a head coach and more than 20 years total including years spent as an assistant. He started his coaching career at his alma mater, where he was an assistant for 15 years under longtime Smithville coach Keith Schrock.
He cannot wait to get started.
"I have been familiar with the area after playing a lot of playoff games in Smithville and I was intrigued by the Madison community," Besancon said. "When you live smack dab between Canton and Mansfield and you grow up with the McKinley/Massillon rivalry on one side of you and the other side is the Madison/Mansfield Senior rivalry, and I think it is any coach's dream to be involved in either one of these rivalries."
As an assistant coach and offensive coordinator for the Smithies, he helped them reach the 2002 state championship game and finish as state runners-up. They had 11 playoff appearances and nine conference championships during his time as an assistant.
He took his first job as varsity head coach in 2007, going 11-9 in two years as New London skipper with 5-5 and 6-4 seasons.
Besancon then left New London to become head coach at Rittman. He went 1-9 during the 2009 season but completely turned things around by going 5-5 in 2010.
He resigned after his second season to take over for Schrock at Smithville in 2012. He spent six seasons as Smithies coach, compiling a 32-30 record before stepping down in 2017. He was voted the 2015 Wayne County Athletic League Coach of the Year after leading Smithville to its first playoff win in 13 years.
Besancon has been an assistant coach at Wooster High School and spent time on Doug Haas's staff and won OCC titles in 2019 and 2020, so he knows the Ohio Cardinal Conference, and Madison, very well. He also coached Lexington head coach Andrew Saris, who spent time as an assistant coach at Madison, when Saris was in high school at Smithville.
"I've had some former players who were assistant coaches at Madison like Andrew Saris and I have kept up with him and he has nothing but great things to say about the community," Besancon said. "I've stayed familiar with it and I am excited. When I took over Rittman and New London, all I tried to do was make football as enjoyable of an experience as I could for the kids and that will be my main focus going into Madison. If I can help it, I want to make football an enjoyable experience for these young men and the community."
Besanson has been on Madison's radar for quite some time as he was a finalist for the same position during one of the previous openings.
"Brent was a finalist for the head coaching position before," Rickert said in the release. "He truly wants to be at Madison and turn things around. Although he was not the head coach at Wooster, he had coached successfully in the OCC as an assistant."
The committee was more impressed by his time at New London at Rittman, where he dedicated himself to revitalizing the struggling program and turned it into a winner in just two seasons.
"What stood out to the committee was his ability to turn around struggling programs, as he did at New London and Rittman as the head coach," Rickert said in the release. "At New London, he had the best Firelands Conference record in 12 years and the only winning season in 13 years.
"At Rittman, he claimed their first five-win season in five years and increased their roster by 20 boys. He expanded their football program to include seventh grade and freshman teams."
Besancon will take over a Madison football program that continues to search for answers. It has not had a .500-or-better season since going 5-5 in 2015. Since 2016, the Rams are a combined 5-62 with three winless seasons. They have just two OCC wins in that span, with their lone win in 2022 coming over winless Mount Vernon. The Rams haven't won more than two games in a season since 2016.
Besancon, who is 49-53 in 10 seasons as a head coach, will be Madison's third head coach in three years.
"We are looking forward to Brent leading our young men next season on the football field," Rickert said.
And he is looking forward to getting to work. His first order of business will be to meet with his new players and let them know right away that he is here to work and help them achieve their goals.
"Where I came from at Smithville, we had three coaches over a 50-year period," Besancon said. "This is three coaches in three different years for these young men, so for me, the first thing I am going to work for us get their trust because they have every right to be skeptic. As that comes, we will try and get that level of work as high as we can because that is what it will take, is a lot of work to get to where we want to be. I will earn their trust so I can raise that level of work."
jfurr@gannett.com
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Twitter: @JakeFurr11
This article originally appeared on Mansfield News Journal: Brent Besancon selected as next Madison Rams football coach
