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FRIDAY NIGHT LIGHTS: New grid coaches ready for debuts
When Cloverdale and South Putnam kick off their high school football game tonight, the coach on each side will be involved in his first Putnam County battle.
Cloverdale’s David Zorman and South Putnam’s Chuck Sorrell will face off tonight, both seeking to break into the county win column for the first time.
While South Putnam has won 33 of the last 37 meetings between the teams, these are clearly different groups of players led by different people.
Zorman is in his first varsity coaching position, admitting he’s “been around” as an assistant at several different places — including Avon, Greencastle (for “three or four years”), and Eastern Greene in 2017 when the Thunderbirds went to the state championship game.
“I sat out last year, and I realized how much I missed it,” said Zorman, who was the middle school athletic director at White River Valley last year. “I heard about this job opening up and applied, and here I am.”
Zorman thinks his short tenure has been “fantastic” and he’s looking forward to the games getting started.
“I love being a head coach, and it’s not all about coaching when you’re a head coach,” he said. “When you come into a program and the boys take you in, I couldn’t be more proud.”
Zorman admits he is still going through a learning curve to adjust to the new teams, coaches and players he will be facing over the next few months.
“I’ve watched a lot of film, but you just don’t know what’s going to happen and who’s going to be good,” he said.
About tonight, Zorman is acquainted with Sorrell and expects a tough battle.
“I know he’s going to coach them up the right way, and I expect a tough battle,” he said. “We’re going to have to go out and be aggressive and play football from the start.”
Sorrell is in his second go-around as a head coach, and he’s hoping to improve on his first stop at South Vermillion. The Wildcats went 4-26 in his three seasons there, but he had been warned that the going would be rough.
“It was a tough job,” said Sorrell, who went to South Vermillion from Indianapolis Pike where he was an assistant. “They hadn’t won a game in three years before I got there, and they told me I wouldn’t win any games my first year. And we didn’t.”
Sorrell noted that team had just two seniors, and one got hurt in the first game.
“From then on, it was a downhill battle,” he said. “It was trying to rebuild a program playing in this same conference with bigger schools such as Northview, Sullivan and West Vigo. We hit some goals, and they had 22 seniors the year after I left.”
The Wildcats won two games in each of Sorrell’s final two seasons, including a win over Class 4A Northview in his final season.
He has been an assistant coach at Cascade and Northview for the past five years, and was the defensive coordinator for six weeks this summer at Southport before taking the South Putnam job late in the summer.
“I was driving by here every day, and I have always told everyone this is the job I’d like to have if it opened up someday,” he said. “They’ve won state championships before and they believe they can get there every year. That’s the kind of place where I like to be.”
The cupboard is not as bare at South Putnam as it was in Sorrell’s last head coaching job. The Eagles won their 11th sectional in school history last year, most among any Putnam County school.
South Putnam has won the three most recent sectional titles among county teams (2011, 2013 and 2018)