OT: Whitmer coach resigns to accept Saline job.
http://www.toledoblade.com/HighSchool/2011/12/20/Whitmer-football-coach-resigns.html
Joe Palka has resigned as Toledo Whitmer's (Kevin Koger, Chris Wormley) head football coach to accept the job at Saline H.S. Coach Palka won more games in Region 2 Division 1 in Ohio over the past six years than any other coach. Pretty impressive and a great pick up for the Saline Hornets.
December 20th, 2011 at 8:21 PM ^
I think this is damn good hire for Saline! Go Hornets!
December 20th, 2011 at 8:27 PM ^
Probably not if he's LSA class of 2000.
December 20th, 2011 at 9:06 PM ^
Oooops.
December 20th, 2011 at 8:28 PM ^
I graduated from Saline HS in 1996.
I still follow the Hornets from a distance (half hour drive from my current house).
December 20th, 2011 at 11:42 PM ^
That's only really funny to me because I was in high school with that guy ... no, he didn't play football.
I played varsity futbol at Saline, though. Yes, I spelled it right. And yes, no one cared then, either.
December 20th, 2011 at 9:38 PM ^
Oh, to hear Mr. Crabtree's bellowing again.
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<br>SHS 96'.
December 20th, 2011 at 11:26 PM ^
SHS '00! Go Hornets, very excited to hear this news. I still miss the days of Jack Crabtree roaming the sidelines at the REAL Hornet stadium, not the silly Pittsfield High that they have now that's practically in Ypsi.
December 20th, 2011 at 8:28 PM ^
Rumors in Toledo are that the resignation is in somewhat related to the illegal recruiting charges levied against Whitmer.
December 20th, 2011 at 8:32 PM ^
Yeah, I live in Toledo also and Joe is a family friend. I haven't talked to him, but I can and will vouch for his character. I don't think there was any "recruiting" going on at Whitmer. I believe that kids tried to transfer into his district to play football for him, but I don't think it was arranged by him in any way. I think that it was being allowed by the AD and other folks in the administration and Coach Palka didn't agree with it.
December 20th, 2011 at 8:38 PM ^
Just by coincidence, Whitmer had up to 10 transfers on their football team in one year. Everyone knows that Toledo high schools have a serious problem of recruiting kids for football/basketball.
December 20th, 2011 at 8:52 PM ^
@jr a lot of those transfers are kids that are in government housing. If you had to be in government housing would you rather be in a school district that passes there levys and has a higher rated education or go to a tps school that is complete crap. The Springfield kid was a move into the district. Dempsey is on a complete witch hunt and I have a few very good inside sources on that.
December 20th, 2011 at 9:35 PM ^
.....? A lot of those kids who transfered were from Springfield or the Bedford area.
December 21st, 2011 at 12:14 AM ^
Bedford is not known for producing top football talent, so I don't know why that matters?
Gamby transfered to St Francis and then went to UT. The only other person I know may be Morris from about 10 years ago...I think he was a center at MSU.
And...Why would you transfer to witmer when you could transfer to a Sylvania school?
December 21st, 2011 at 9:28 AM ^
Morris played all his football at Bedford then went to MSU.
December 21st, 2011 at 10:21 AM ^
to that Gamby story...just sayin.
December 20th, 2011 at 9:05 PM ^
The private schools have been recruiting kids for years if not decades now. It is known throughout the city, but everyone turns a blind eye to it. I went to SFS and I don't know what is up with us in athletics(except lax).
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<br>I will just say it is not by chance that SJJ, SFS or Central Catholic (recently Whitmer) one almost every City League title in the last 20 years. I know with the TRAC it is suppose to be more competitive, but in the long term I see the same 4 rising to the top, and we all know the appeal of those schools over the remaining TPS schools.
December 20th, 2011 at 9:25 PM ^
First off, hell yeah. SFS Lax has a good chance at winning states. And of course swimming...
I hate when people assume that SFS recruits kids. OBVIOUSLY, there is a overall recruitment for students from feeder schools, but in terms of athletic recruitng we aren't doing nearly the same as the other Toledo schools. Obviously with our talent level in recent year we aren't recruiting like these other schools are. Of course there is some sort of recruitment since we have a week called RECRUITMENT week, but there isn't athletic recruitment going on. The most athletic recruitment that goes on is, kid follows a student around for the day, if they are into a sport they go to the coach durin the day and they say, "Hey, so....How do you like it so far....Be a knight, have a nice day. Plus Fr. O (President) has addressed this several times that we aren't going out of our way, besides the normal recruitment of feeder schools.
December 20th, 2011 at 9:47 PM ^
If SFS is doing this, i don't think we are, we suck at it. Football, basketball, baseball are our low sports. Swimming, water polo, hockey, and now lax are the strong sports. Swimming and water polo make a lot of sense since we are the only private school with a pool in house i believe. Hockey don't have an explanation except good coaching and development from JV to Varsity standing players. Lax is sort of the same as hockey, plus the sport is exploding in the area currently so more koids are playing at a younger age, thus more talent at HS level.
To be honest, if i ever heard about a recruiting scandel at SFS i would be ashamed of my high school education. SFS was known in my junior and senior years (2005-2006) as one of the 20 best private schools in the country, and that is something tha i am proud to say i was a part of.
Also, i was part of the first 2 SFS lax teams and the schools first LSM. We sucked compared to the team now 1-10 first year and 5-12 second year.
December 20th, 2011 at 9:52 PM ^
Hockey is a little low because we had an amazing senior class last year and with lax I think we were just the first to really make a team and like Hockey, SFS and SJJ are pretty much the onlty schools with big hockey/lacrosse programs with good educations.
December 20th, 2011 at 11:00 PM ^
SFS is the only catholic school with a pool. it was built eithe3r in the late 60's or very early 70's. St John's did not have a swim team until the mid-80's if the rumors are correct. i did swim at SFS's pool for a GTAC sponsored event for a club team back in the mid 70's.
December 20th, 2011 at 10:53 PM ^
wrt to your school SFS or SJJ or for that matter CC. is it truly recruitiing a catholic kid to play at any of the three schools? they already recruit kids to go to their respective schools anyway -- or at least they did back in my day. one could assume, and rightly in most cases, that a kid playing CYO football wants to go one of the three anyway. your school did talk to my dad about me going to SFS and play football, while we were playing at the old CYO fields at SFS. So was i recruited or not? and is this illegal? If memory serves me correctly, it would only be a recruiting violatiion in Ohio, if SFS paid my way, and SFS wasn't offering. today all three schools try to support their students to some degree financially because of the high cost regardless if they play sports or not.
at that time the state was coming down hard on cinci moeller for recruiting violations, but they were bussing in kids from Dayton, Indiana and kentucky at that time. the cinci moeller coach later coached at ND because of his prowess in recruiting.
the threee catholic schools in toledo have always had the built in advantage of having kids who wanted to go there and have up to four years of solid football training in the cyo programs, which is something that the public schools did not have or just had 2 years of organized football. CC and SFS were always good and SJJ became good in most sports including football back in the 70's. the toledo cathoilic schools have always dominated the area for this reason.
Did I go to SFS -- nope; i went to SJJ and glad that I did.
December 20th, 2011 at 8:47 PM ^
Those rumors are all from Dempsey at cc. That man is on a witch hunt that palka got sick of. O and the fact he's making 30k more at saline kind of speaks for it's self.
December 20th, 2011 at 9:05 PM ^
December 20th, 2011 at 8:59 PM ^
That's like going from the Big Ten to the Big East...
Then again, 30k more a year and a much nicer place to live.
December 20th, 2011 at 9:15 PM ^
Whitmer is caught up in a recruiting scandal like mentioned in other posts. People can deny it all they want but Whitmer was getting students in from other districts that just happened to be all-state type athletes. The Ohio Athletic Asso is not happy with Whitmer that they found a judge to set back their decisions. I'm guessing Whitmer is going to lay low on the "recruiting" effort and Palka decided to get out or maybe was suggested he leave. Now to be fair the Catholic schools all do the same thing and have been for years and it's legal.
December 20th, 2011 at 9:19 PM ^
According to your theory Dempsey is on a witch hunt and sold the OSHAA a bill of goods and there is no truth to the stories? I think what's sad is that Joe is a CCHS grad and former head coach and wants to blame on his problems on CCHS.
What really happened is that:
1) coaches from all over the area got tired of Joe beating them and started passing the evidence on to the OSHAA
2) parents of some of the kids who have grown up in the district complain b/c their kids don't play b/c transfer students take their spots (including his own son the QB who continued to live in MI and play football in Ohio)
Joe will be for a rude awakening with a program and talent several layers below Div 1 football in Ohio and no way to improve the quality. Joe was a marginal coach at best before he came to Whitmer.
December 20th, 2011 at 9:26 PM ^
So you must be a expert on Saline High School football and the type of talent they have. How many layers exactly are they below Div 1 football in Ohio?
December 20th, 2011 at 9:34 PM ^
a few. Chris Baker is the best. He played at MSU and then went on to have a lengthy career in the NFL. The rest are forgettable. Helmuth(UM, then left the team), Rusty Wilson(Duke), and some kid whose name I do not recall(Utah State). Boisture played a single here. I do not consider him a Hornet.
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<br>Saline's talent generally is below average. But we do have a decent tradition. Jack Crabtree lead Saline to numerous conference titles over his 20 year career.
December 20th, 2011 at 10:18 PM ^
One of the best indicators of how screwed we were in '08 is to recognize that had circumstances not thrust him into the spotlight, Nick Sheridan would have been ranked below "that guy I can't remember" from Utah State in the list of Saline Football greats (I'm assuming his exclusion is just an oversight).
December 20th, 2011 at 9:33 PM ^
Dempsey is definitely winning the recruit battle with the amount of "vouchers" they have not only athletically but overall. I've gotta friend who is on the V Football team and he said over 2/3 of the football team is on some sort of Voucher.
I'm all for giving kids money for school and give them a chance to make the best of the situation but I guarantee some of those kids, do not deserve or need those vouchers.
December 21st, 2011 at 7:59 AM ^
I think Central has an LD class for kids too. Which is a reason Jamey Thompson transfered there from SFS. Not sure if he has been cleared by NCAA, but I know if he stayed at SFS he probably would not have cleared.
December 20th, 2011 at 9:40 PM ^
Palka has some ties here already.
December 20th, 2011 at 10:00 PM ^
This is a great hire, Glennie was a great teacher, but he needed to go as our head coach.
December 20th, 2011 at 10:05 PM ^
He's like the John Calipari of high school coaches.
"Chance of upcoming sanctions? Well I better skidaddle"
December 20th, 2011 at 10:41 PM ^
Thank you for posting this for me!
December 20th, 2011 at 11:36 PM ^
December 21st, 2011 at 12:24 AM ^
Does anyone know why Glennie resigned in the first place?
December 21st, 2011 at 9:50 AM ^
I would say politics. When I say that there's a lot of politics in Saline that's an understatement. I'm sure people were disappointed with his lack of success season to season wise and he was probably tired of dealing with it.
December 21st, 2011 at 1:33 PM ^
I figured that was the case. I just had a hard time believing it considering how bad they were before he got there.
December 21st, 2011 at 8:51 AM ^
This is a good hire for Saline. Whitmer blew up to be about as high of a profile job as I can ever remember any job being in Northwest Ohio. There were articles every week regarding recruiting. The Leroy Alexander case was on the news, in the newspaper and talked about around the city more than any kid I can ever remember. I am sure it got old dealing with that stuff. There were a huge number of kids that move in to play football, but I am not sure that isn't more a function of our society now.
It is hard to turn down a big pay increase. Saline High School is beautiful and quite frankly is a top notch place to live and work. Whitmer is a very good place for a school in a major city, but is still different than a Saline. I would doubt coach will ever have the type of talent he had at Whitmer, but he will still be successful there. He is a very, very solid coach and a great hire for Saline.
December 21st, 2011 at 9:34 AM ^
Read somewhere that Palka is from the Temperance area but that's not far from Whitmer. I suspect he has been teaching/coaching long enough in Ohio to be elgible for the Ohio pension and now will qualify for another from Michigan. So that with the big pay increase, why wouldn't he take the job.
December 21st, 2011 at 10:37 AM ^
Here's hoping the new coach at Whitmer isn't an Ohio fan.