Waynesfield-Goshen head coach Shane Wireman was 10-0 this season and guided the Tigers to an outright Northwest Central Conference crown.
WAYNESFIELD — It has been more than a week and the Gibsonburg loss still weighs on Waynesfield-Goshen head coach Shane Wireman.
The 30-20 defeat ended the Tigers’ run that saw them go undefeated in the regular season and secure a playoff victory for the second season in a row. But Wireman wanted to go one step more than last year and it didn’t happen, and while he was disappointed with the way the season ended, Wireman is happy with what the team accomplished.
The Tigers went 10-0 in the regular season, only the second time in school history, and won the Northwest Central Conference title outright for the first time since 2011. It marked the second straight year (third if you include the pandemic season) the Tigers have made the postseason.
“It’s so hard as a coach when you have that Gibsonburg loss fresh in your mind,” Wireman said. “But I think the further you move away from that and sit back and reflect on just how well our guys did play this year. We went 10-0 and were undefeated in the conference and won it. We have been runners-up and shared it a couple of times but to go undefeated was a huge accomplishment for our players and our coaching staff,” he said.
“This is year seven for me and my coaching staff and we have been chipping away and chipping away and were finally able to put it all together and do well in the regular season and make some noise in the postseason. It is a good accomplishment and something I was very proud of and proud of the way our players played all year and they continued to work and want to take it further next year. That is kind of the expectation, is take it a step further and build on the class before you,” Wireman said.
With all these accomplishments, Wireman is the 2022 Dream Team Coach of the Year.
More impressive is Wireman’s journey in establishing a winning culture at W-G, considering he inherited a squad that had gone 0-10 in 2016. In three short seasons, the Tigers produced a winning record and that peaked this year with the historic unblemished campaign.
Even though there were high expectations from the Tigers this season, there were some question marks that lingered with the most important being replacing a four-year all-league quarterback in Cooper Roberts, as well as filling other needs left by a talented graduating class.
This year’s Tigers embraced the challenge and behind quarterback Drew Breitigam, the running of Aiden Biederman and the pass catching of Dalton Jordan, the offense thrived. All three of them can thank a veteran offensive line led by senior Chase Dunson for the holes and protection.
The Tigers averaged 42 points a contest during the regular season and in nine of those games scored 30 or more points.
Defensively, the same held true as the Tigers had five shutouts this year and gave up less than five points a contest.
Wireman points to having a good mixture of skilled players with strong linemen as to why the Tigers excelled and added that it was 50-50 split when they broke into groups.
“It was nice to see half the team in the linemen group and half the team in the skilled group,” Wireman said. “That is important to us. We had a good mixture of upperclassmen as well some very talented sophomores already playing on Friday nights so a good mixture of experience and youth.”
Wireman said because the team did have high hopes this season he had the luxury, if you want to call it that, to focus on some of the smaller details of his team and how to improve them and by working with his coaching staff was able to focus on tweaking those areas that might have been a concern coming into the year.
“At the beginning, you look at the big picture but as you start to get better you start fine-tuning and looking at things that maybe you didn’t look at two or three years ago because you were so focused on the big picture and trying to get basics established and now we can narrow our vision and fine-tune things and that has been a different challenge,” Wireman said.
Wireman adds that the support from the community has also been a major factor in the establishment of the winning culture.
“We love the way they have supported us on Friday nights and we want to go out there and make those people proud as well and continue to put good product out there on the field and our guys have held up to that,” Wireman said. “I say pressure is a good thing if you use it to motivate you and you use it to work hard.”
Beating Upper Scioto Valley and winning the league title are two of the big things that stand out for Wireman this year but even he is eyeing the future already.
“We really want to get out of that second round of the playoffs,” Wireman said. “We want to get to that third round and my job and my vision and our coaching staff’s job is to reflect on this and say to the guys, ‘You know how much work it took to get to where we were this year. (Let’s) get to that second round and compete with a good team in Gibsonburg and then start asking those questions of what it’s going to take to get to that third round and hopefully further.’
“It was a fun season. My heart is still broken we lost to Gibsonburg, but as a coach when you sit back and look at it in five, 10 or 15 years, you will look back and say, man, that was a heck of an accomplishment as a group, so a lot to be proud at the W-G.”
