Marion Harding's Dan Arndt wants to impact lives like his former coach
MARION — It's taken more than 20 years, but for new Marion Harding head football coach Dan Arndt, he's grateful for the opportunity. He's also excited to continue to do what he feels he was born to do.
"I played my high school career at Mount Gilead," Arndt said, a 1995 graduate of the school. "I played for the great Jim Trainer. I loved the man. I had the privilege of playing for that man for four seasons. I played in the heyday of Mount Gilead when we won the conference and went 9-1 and 8-2 my sophomore year. The guy taught me a lot about the game."
Trainer became Arndt's role model when he was a player and his mentor as an adult. Within two years of graduating, Trainer brought him aboard to help Mount Gilead's middle school football team as a defensive coach.
From there, it's been a number of roles at all sorts of levels of the sport.
"I coached with Keith Recker at Marion Catholic and did one season there. It was probably the toughest and most humbling year of my life. It’s hard to compete when you’ve got 18 kids out there. I worked with Tony Morris a little bit (at Ridgedale)," Arndt said.
He coached youth football and was on the Grant Middle School staff in Marion, too.
Arndt, who works as an alternative learning class instructor at Grant, was brought up to the varsity team when Jerrod Slater took over as head coach at Marion Harding, serving as a position coach on defense for three seasons. Last year in the first year of Demetrius Ross, Arndt became the defensive coordinator.
"Coach D decided to go ahead and move me and gave me the keys to the defense," Arndt said. "Defense has always been my thing. We had a lot of success last year defensively. We actually ranked out as the top defense in the MOAC last year. Hopefully we can relive that."
The Presidents held opponents to 309 yards per game and forced 22 turnovers, but five times they limited teams to less than 228 yards of total offense. Eight times the run defense held opponents to 131 or fewer yards.
The defense was a big part behind the program's turnaround, posting it's second winning season since 2004 and its first since 2017. The seven wins were the most since 2003 at Harding.
When Ross abruptly resigned a little over a week before the start of the regular season, into the void stepped Arndt and the rest of the staff. Arndt was hired as the head coach, his first varsity head coaching gig.
He couldn't resist.
"I feel football is engrained in me," he said. "It’s either in your blood or it’s not. It’s not something you can turn on or turn off. You either have it or you don’t. It’s something I’ve always been passionate about."
Coaching simply itches where he scratches.
"It’s the competitiveness. You’re either a competitor or you’re not. I love to compete in everything I do," Arndt said. "If we’re going to go eat chicken wings, I’m going to compete against you and eat more chicken wings. Everything with me is a competition.
"And then there are the X’s and the O’s. It’s like a chess game. I enjoy the fact that you are taking the pieces out on the field and you’re trying to scheme and come up with a plan to outflank or outmaneuver your opponent. That’s very, very exciting to me."
Most of all, coaching gives him an opportunity to impact lives like his former high school football coach impacted his.
"I got to play for Coach Trainer and several amazing football coaches at Mount Gilead," he said. "I watched them. I learned from them, and I’ve seen how much enjoyment and fulfillment they got in developing not only football players but young men. I want to help and be part of the solution and develop successful young men at the Marion City Schools."
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This article originally appeared on Marion Star: Marion Harding's Dan Arndt wants to impact lives like his former coach
