Lucky 13 is a good one. DeSales football coach Ryan Wiggins joins the show to talk about his career and the game of football.
Wiggins has had a nice couple of years as head coach of his alma mater. He’s gone 10-0 in both regular seasons, defeated rival Watterson three times and has an overall record of 25-2 at the school.
The coach went directly from being a player at DeSales, on the 1996 team that was state runner up, to being wide receivers coach the next year. After nine years coaching under Bob Jacoby, Wiggins accepted the head coaching job at Akron St. Vincent-St. Mary, where he guided a young squad to a 4-6 record.
Then came the news that Jacoby had resigned, just before Thanksgiving 2006. Wiggins was introduced as the new head coach at DeSales shortly after that and the rest is history.
The Wiggins-led Stallions ended a nine-game losing streak to Watterson in ‘07, and advanced to a regional final, where a slow start ended in a 25-20 loss to Louisville.
DeSales again went 10-0 in the ‘08 regular season, including another win over the Eagles, then had to play them again in Week 1 of the postseason. The Stallions won that game, and eventually defeated Louisville in a rematch, before dropping a tough state semifinal contest to Cincinnati Anderson, a team they’d beaten in the regular season.
This season DeSales will again have to fill a lot of holes left by departed seniors, but as the T-shirts some students and fans of the school wear says, “Tradition never graduates”.
A big thanks to Ryan for joining the show.
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