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Jim Noelker Former Central State University coach, Theo Lemon is now the health & gym teacher at Wogaman Elementary School in Dayton.

By Tom Archdeacon, Staff Writer Updated 9:51 PM Saturday, December 5, 2009

He coached college football for 28 years, has been to bowl games and won a national tile.

He was an assistant coach at Wake Forest, Rutgers, Northeastern, East Carolina and his alma mater, Ohio University.

He was the head coach at Kentucky State, College of DuPage, Savannah State and Central State, where he was the defensive coordinator of the 1990 NAIA title team, then returned in 2003 to relaunch the long mothballed program.

So where has been Theo Lemon’s most impressive performance? It may have been this past season at Wogaman Elementary.

Starting with just five kids on an unmowed plot of grass, he assembled a team of seventh- and eighth-graders — the Wogaman Elks — from five surrounding schools, and they not only went unbeaten in seven games, they were unscored upon.

It was a nice respite from his last stop at Savannah State, a school that had won four games in four years and was under heavy NCAA sanction when he took over. After going 3-18 in two seasons, he was let go and returned to Dayton, where his wife and two sons still lived. He began teaching physical education and health at Wogaman and soon was making a difference.

The Elks’ postseason banquet at Sinclair Community College was proof. He made players wear a shirt and tie, and thanks to Sinclair, each kid not only got a big “Heisman-like” trophy, but a college scholarship if they maintain a 2.0 grade-point average.

The featured speaker was new CSU coach E.J. Junior. “He’s somebody who can make a real difference (at CSU) if they decide to invest in the program,” Lemon said.

And while the players’ parents were bowled over by the scholarships, his kids, he laughed, had another focus: “They were all, ‘Hey, nice trophy.’ ”

In his words

“There is no question in my mind, teaching is harder than coaching.

“I don’t mind being fired when the field is level, but that wasn’t the case in Savannah. But like I always tell my players: ‘Nobody cares how rough the sea is, just sail the stinking ship.’

“I’m also doing diversity training for the NCAA. We go college to college teaching coaching staffs, athletic staffs. I’ve been to Southern Miss, Ohio State, San Angelo State. ... At Virginia Tech, I look up, and there’s Frank Beamer and his whole staff.

“I want to get back into college coaching. Football’s my passion, but then I was brainwashed at birth. I was born in Massillon, and then, like now, every new baby born there gets a football.

“All the years I coached, I thought I’d experienced everything. But teaching little kids is a reality check. You can be yelling at your class to make a point, and right in the middle of it, some little fellow barely past your kneecap comes up, taps you and says, ‘I got to go to the bathroom.’ ”

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