DaytonDailyNews.com

OAKWOOD — One is a senior in high school. The other is a senior citizen.

One — a former cornerback now an offensive lineman — is still growing into his teenage body. The other has just come off his second hip replacement surgery.

Joey Lefforge is just 17. George Stavnitski is 74.

And yet the two of them share a common view of the world. It's upside down — seen while stooped over and looking back through their own legs.

Lefforge is the center of Oakwood High School's football team that meets Jonathan Alder in the first round of the Division IV state playoffs Friday night, Oct. 31, in Plain City.

Stavnitski is the former center and co-captain of the University of North Carolina football team — a guy who knocked helmets with the likes of Duke's Sonny Jurgensen and Notre Dame's Paul Hornung — and now is a volunteer coach for the Lumberjacks.

"He doesn't seem like an old guy to me, he's just a football guy," Lefforge said with the unvarnished assessment of a Gen Y teen. "To me — to all the guys — he's just Coach Stav."

Before last year, it had been a long, long time — say like 47 years — since someone called Stavnitski Coach Stav.

After starting three years as a two-way player for the Tar Heels, Stavnitski stayed in Chapel Hill and, while working on his masters degree, coached the UNC freshman team with Bud Carson, who later became the Cleveland Browns head coach.

He followed that with three years as an assistant coach at High Point (N.C.) High School and then moved to the Dayton area — wife Betsy is an Oakwood High School and Duke University grad — and began a long career in southwest Ohio and Portland, Ore., working for Del Monte Foods and then the Connelly Brothers food brokerage.

Once retired, the Stavnitskis began to spend their winters in Hilton Head, S.C., and it was there, two years ago, that George approached the Hilton Head High School coach and asked if he needed any help during spring football practices.

That worked out so well that once back in Dayton he talked first to former Oakwood High coach Howard Sales — for whom the Stavnitskis' three sons played prep football — and then to Lumberjacks current head coach Paul Stone, who not only embraced the idea, but offered a suggestion.

One that still draws a laugh from Stavnitski:

"He told me to just kind of walk around the practice field and act like Bear Bryant or Joe Paterno."

Life lessons important

Just like in Stavnitski's day, Oakwood has eight players — Lefforge is also the middle linebacker — playing both ways. And while George also helped with linebackers last year, this season he's mainly concentrated on the Jacks' interior offensive linemen.

"He watches me like a hawk," Lefforge said with a laugh.

But Stavnitski offers more than technique tips, Stone said. He gives voice to some life lessons, too.

"I let him talk to the kids on Thursdays," Stone said. "He gives them stories and insights, and I think they need to hear from guys who played in the '50s and '60s. He shows a certain passion for the game and that's what the kids love about him."

Stavnitski said he first began to understand a coach's expanded role when he was at High Point: "There were just two of us on the staff and back then we did everything. We coached, we were the trainers, the equipment men and, lots of times, someone players would open up to.

"I can remember at night after practice, some kid would be hanging around the locker room and he'd want to talk to you. He'd tell you things he didn't tell his parents or his teachers. It struck me then the influence a coach can have."

And that's where those weekly talks come in, Stone said:

"It's more than just the football game, it's about how you are as a person. How you grow into a man. He'll talk about things like character and integrity — how they're all born with it — but how once you lose it, you can never get it back.

"Sometimes with teenagers, stuff like that goes in one ear and then just sits there a while. But when they get older, all of a sudden they remember it and figure out how to apply it."

The best medicine

In early August Stavnitski had his left hip replaced and wasn't able to join the Lumberjacks for two-a-days or the start of the season.

"We talked and he was so bummed out that he couldn't be out here with us," Stone said. "When he finally did get back, there was a glimmer in his eye."

Stavnitski hobbled off the injured reserve list faster than anyone expected.

"I missed the first two games and the third game I went and sat in the stands," he said. "I planned to only stay until the half, but then I got into it so much I called Betsy up and said, 'Pick me up later. I'm staying 'til the end.' "

By the next week he was back on the sidelines, coaching from a cane. His wife said it was the best medicine for him — that whatever he gives to the kids doing this, he gets just as much in return.

"This has been marvelous for George," she said. "He's having a lot of fun and it's like he's gone full circle. Fifty years ago when we got married he was a coach and now he's one again. Although a lot has happened in between, he's right back where he started. It's almost like nothing's changed."

It is, after all, just like Joey Lefforge said:

"He's just a football guy."