By mid-afternoon Tuesday, a dream was realized by Neosho High School coach/teacher Jared Schoonover.
Last year he shared play calling duties and eventually took over full-time play calling from Shawn Flannigan. Now, he is taking over for Flannigan as the head coach of the Wildcats after Flannigan took the head coach job at Rogers, Ark., last month.
Schoonover brings a good background in football and will look to use the experience he gained as an assistant coach to help build up the football program at Neosho High School.
“To me, Neosho is my dream job,” Schoonover said. “My goal in my profession is to put my stamp on a program long-term. I want to be around high character people and to me Neosho is that. This is not where I want to start, Neosho is the place I want to be long term. I see potential here and as far as my two girls and my wife, this is everything. This is where we want to put down roots and raise my family. I want to be here for a long time and this is a program I want to build up from the bottom.
“We will have short term and long term goals and we will focus on both this year. We have a solid senior class coming up and we want them to go out on a winning note. If the pieces fall right, we could have a successful season. We don’t want to lose sight and build the foundation of the program, from the youth programs which are very successful to the junior high programs to developing our underclass program.”
Schoonover takes over a program that has won two straight district titles.
He took over play calling from Flannigan following the game against Webb City. Given that, he will still run the spread offense at Neosho.
The transition for the players should be an easy one as the upcoming seniors will have ran this offense for three years come the fall.
As a whole, the Neosho offense averaged nearly 400 yards and 38 points per game last year.
“I think any coach will talk about the kids and not themselves when you have 400 yards of offense and nearly 40 points per game,” Schoonover said. “All that credit goes to the kids.”
And if it wasn’t for Flannigan, Schoonover may not have ended up in Neosho.
“Shawn (Flannigan) is a great coach and we worked well together. I knew about the spread offense he was going to run and he gave me an opportunity to advance my career to so speak and come here,” Schoonover said. “I was going to coach the wide receivers and if he liked what I was doing, he would give me the opportunity to call plays. That opportunity helped me become a head coach.”
Another thing that appealed to Schoonover when he applied for the job was the love and passion NHS fans have shown over recent years.
“It’s a big deal and the people here bleed Neosho sports and that is a big thing,” Schoonover said. “We have people that will do stuff for you and won’t do it for something in return. They do it because they want you to be successful.”
Schoonover spent five years at Bentonville High School and learned from one of the best in Barry Lunney, Sr., a hall of fame coach in Arkansas. Lunney has five state titles to his name and took over a Bentonville team that struggled prior to his arrival. In two years, he took the team to the state title game and earned the 7A Championship in 2008.
Schoonover was the wide receiver coach then and the offensive coordinator of the freshman team.
Being around Lunney, Schoonover learned how to build a program and sustain it. There were also little things that Schoonover took with him.
“He came in with high character people and wanted to do the little things right,” Schoonover said of Lunney. “Everything we do, you do it right. Lunney was a high character man who wanted to help people and the kids. He is a man I modeled my coaching after.”
At Neosho, Schoonover will have a new defensive coordinator this year in Corey Roy, the school’s athletic director.
Roy had previously served on the coaching staff as an assistant under Flannigan in 2008. He served as head coach at Logan-Rogersville for eight years. Coach Zach Nelson, who was on the staff last year as the defensive back coach, will be the special teams coach.
Nelson has experience in the college level at St. Cloud State, a top notch Division II program.
“From a coaching standpoint I will have staff with three former head coaches in Robert Burr, Larry Perkins and Roy. We have two guys in Zach Nelson and myself that have coaching at the college level.
“Coach (Darryl) Harbaugh, Coach (Josh) Sonis and Coach (Ben) Jones are all been around good football programs. These are high character men that love the kids and want the kids to be successful.
“I have a lot of confidence in myself as a coach, but you wouldn’t be wise not take in things from Coach Perkins or Coach Burr or Corey Roy because of their experience. My philosophy is that coaches coach and as a head coach you don’t want to have to micromanage and I won’t need to do that because I have great coaches here.”
One of the short-term goals for Schoonover is to increase the number if possible and ideally have a freshman team, a junior varsity and a varsity team.
Last year, Neosho suited up around 70 players for Friday night games.
“You have got to have the numbers to consistently compete and we are in one of the best conferences in Missouri,” Schoonover said. “We have a strong freshman class and we’ve got talent in the sophomore and junior class.”
A goal at some point is to have 35 to 50 players per grade on the football team and being a Class 5 school that isn’t very far from what many of the powerhouse teams have. At Bentonville, though a Class 7A school in Arkansas, the number of players between ninth and 12th grades was between 220 to 250 players each year.
Roy talked about the hire Tuesday after the school board meeting.
“Jared brings a lot to the table,” Roy said. “He has a great relationship with the kids and he is an excellent teacher. There are a lot of positives in him and his goal is to be in Neosho and build it to a program that is very successful.”
