Schugars family is football coaching royalty, despite not playing varsity

Aug. 21—TRAVERSE CITY — Orders bark at Traverse City Central football practice.

Players listen intently to the instructions conveyed, eager to soak up knowledge they'll soon employ on the field.

Eric and Jack Schugars, the son-and-father coaching duo at Central, do a lot of the talking. And in a lot of ways, they're pioneers.

Many of the Trojan football players wouldn't know it unless you told them, but neither played the sport in high school.

"You would not realize that, for sure," said 2022 TC Central grad Kadyn Warner, a defensive end headed off to play at Saginaw Valley this fall. "Just how much they know about the game and how much they care about the players. The connection is great, too. You can tell coach Schugars learned a lot from his dad."

Players often call Eric Schugars "Schugs" and Jack "Papa Schugs."

"If you spend 30 minutes around either, you'll find their football IQ is up there with anyone I've ever met," said TC Central 2022 grad Carson Bourdo, a defensive back headed to play at Johns Hopkins. "Their IQs are so much higher than anyone that played football. It's not a big deal that they didn't play."

Jack Schugars, who still lives in Muskegon and commutes between Big Rapids and Traverse City to coach for both the Trojans and Ferris State University, grew up playing hockey.

He played for the Muskegon Jr. Zephyrs in the International Hockey League and then club hockey at Western Michigan University while working on an education degree. Starting as a biology teacher at Muskegon Oakridge in 1969, the superintendent asked if he'd like to coach.

He replied, "You don't have a hockey team."

The elder Schugars, now 75, started out coaching the middle school football team, catching on quickly and guiding that team to an 18-5-1 record in three seasons.

He then moved up to junior varsity head coach for three years (18-7-2) before serving as a varsity assistant for three seasons under former Houston Oilers and Michigan State linebacker Calvin Fox and taking the reins as varsity head coach in 1979. He'd coach Oakridge to three state championships, two other state finals appearances, 19 league titles and a 262-78 record before "retiring" in 2010.

He was Ferris State's special teams coordinator from 2012-17, and he still serves as a part-time coach for the special teams unit. He joined TC Central's staff in 2018, coaching special teams.

Of course, Jack thinks special teams doesn't get enough time in practice.

"You're somehow full-time at both schools," Eric said to his dad. "I don't know how you do it."

In the 2021 season, Jack Schugars helped coach Ferris State to the Division 2 national championship and joined his son's staff for a run to the Division 2 state championship game.

Eric's coaching record is nothing to sneeze at. The 45-year-old is 62-16 at TC Central, winning six Big North Conference titles in seven years, three district championships, two regionals titles and a state finals appearance last season.

Similarly, he worked his way up the coaching ladder.

"Part of me, I'm not proud of not playing," said Eric, who played football in junior high and sub-varsity in ninth grade. "It's a regret."

Most everyone assumes Eric played for his dad, but he didn't even go to the same high school. Eric was a water boy in middle school for his dad's team, riding the bus to road games.

He made his own path and played varsity basketball for Orchard View, reaching the state quarterfinals as a senior. Of course, being tall and lanky played a part of his gravitation to the hardwood over the gridiron. He also played tennis and ran track.

"I'm not going to force a kid to do what he doesn't want to do," Jack Schugars said.

But Eric since built an impressive football resume.

"I was around it so much and my dad coached and my mom was a teacher," Eric said. "I saw home much they loved it."

Eric started his post-college career as a sports anchor at TV 7&4 in Traverse City, working there in 2000-01. In that time, he had to cover one of his dad's games, a 35-28 regional championship overtime loss to Boyne City in which Oakridge fumbled inside the 10-yard line late. Luckily, he was only there to cover Boyne City and didn't have to interview his father on camera after the loss.

But while he reported on sports at night, he had another career brewing during the day as a substitute teacher, taking classes through Grand Valley State at the Career Center in Traverse City to get certified to teach. He also started coaching football with Greg Farmer at TC West and helped the freshman basketball team there under Mike Wilde for a year.

After getting certified, Eric taught world history at TC West for two years, landing a social studies teaching job at TC Central in 2006 and ascending the coaching ranks ever since. He took over as defensive coordinator from 2011-15 and was named head coach in 2015.

When Eric was named head coach, Jack said he wasn't going to coach with him. He didn't want it to look like who his dad was had anything to do with Eric getting the job. So he stayed away until Eric had clearly established that he was doing just fine on his own, joining the staff three years and a 26-7 record later.

"Wherever I went, people would always go, 'Oh, you're Jack's son,'" Eric said. "I saw how much of an impact he had on the Oakridge community. How can you not try to emulate that?"

Not a bad one to have as a built-in mentor.

Jack Schugars is in three Hall of Fames — the Michigan High School Football Coaches Association (1993), Michigan High School Coaches Association (2008) and Muskegon Sports Hall of Fame (2009) — and is 20th in all-time football coaching wins in Michigan high school history. Oakridge renamed its football field after him.

"The energy they both bring is electric," said Warner, who will be playing against Jack Schugars in the Great Lakes Intercollegiate Athletic Conference. "It's pure fun when they're both around."

While TC Central played in a 7-on-7 this summer, Jenison head coach Rob Zeitman made all his players shake Jack Schugars' hand.

"The scoreboard is not about wins and losses," Jack Schugars said. "It's about how many boys you help make into men ... but it's more fun to win."

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