Reitveld calls Ravenwood 'right spot' for him, family

By CAROL STUART
For Brentwood Home Page
New Ravenwood football coach Joe Reitveld met with Raptors parents and players last night to begin building relationships on the way to trying to rebuild the program back to the championship level.

“Even before we can talk about football, I'm going to talk about individuals, me as a person and the players and parents as people -- what our expectations are going to be for each other,” Reitveld said Saturday.

New Ravenwood coach Joe Reitveld, right, is pictured with the Indiana Class 4A state runner-up trophy in 2004 at Wawasee.

“Before you can even begin to call a play or design a scheme, I've got to be able trust individuals and they have to be able to trust me … Long-term goals, I would love to put another banner up on the wall that says State Champion, but I know it doesn't start with me drawing up the diagram and perfect plays; it starts with everybody being on the same page headed in the same direction.”

Reitveld, who led Wawasee to the 2004 Indiana Class 4A state finals, was named Friday as the new Raptors coach – a month after two-year coach Tom Shuman’s replacement coach, Del Smith, resigned abruptly just seven weeks into the job.

“You can't turn back time to take away some of the roller coaster of the emotions people in the area have gone through, but all I can promise is we're focusing forward and we're going to be successful,” Reitveld said.

Third time's the charm for Reitveld and Raptors

The math teacher, who is a graduate of Indiana University, had actually talked with Ravenwood about a coaching position on Jack Daniels’ staff after visiting some friends in the area before RHS opened in 2001.

The Raptors went on to win a state championship in 2005 and also made the finals in ’06 under Coach Brian Rector, who has now returned to head up Centennial’s program following two years in the college ranks.

“As it turned out, it didn't work out, which was good for Ravenwood -- they had a tremendous amount of success with Coach Rector,” Reitveld said. “And for me, I was just ready to turn the corner at Wawasee High school, and it worked out well for me also.

“We went on our championship run and had several years of successful seasons back-to-back. We had a little bit of history there that was kind of neat. Throughout that time, I always followed Ravenwood. When we’d come to visit our friends at Thanksgiving, it was kind of nice to see them in the playoffs.”

Reitveld also applied earlier this year when Smith was named, but his application may have been misplaced and he wasn’t officially interviewed.

“It's kind of crazy how it happened. Hopefully, after we win a bunch of football games, everybody's going to forget about that anyway,” he said.

Reitveld, an assistant three seasons in Florida and seven years at Cincinnati’s acclaimed Anderson High School before his nine-year stint at Wawasee, said he also watched some other schools play during his trips here.

“We just know this is a great area for sports in general and football in particular,” he said.

Reitveld encouraged by team's commitment, past success

The new Ravenwood coach left his football post at Wawasee in ’06 and stayed on as a teacher, but spent 2007 coaching a neighboring school in northern Indiana. He said he had been selective since in waiting for the right fit, turning down assistant opportunities at both college and high school and also looking into some other head coaching jobs.

“That was partly because I felt I was in a position where I had been successful and I had turned a program that was really down into a successful program,” Reitveld said. “The other part of it I was going to wait until I found the right spot, and Ravenwood is the right spot.

 “At this point in my career and in my life, it had to be right for my family and it had to be right for me.”

Reitveld said he had been impressed through the hiring process that Ravenwood officials were “concerned that they were going to get a person of high character in the position as much as somebody who has a lot of football knowledge, and that just fits with my philosophy.”

“A lot of times you get in the situation where somebody may just look at a win-loss record, and not really look at how they got there and what they did all along the process,” he said. “I was just excited about that.

“And then knowing that they'd had some success in the past was exciting also, because there must be something there that allowed them to have success.”

The new Raptors coach also is encouraged not only that RHS has had good numbers on the roster during down seasons, but also that the football players and assistant coaches have continued weight training.

“That just shows a commitment level to me, that even though they don't have a head coach right now and someone directing the ship, that they're still willing to do what some teams that have head coaches aren't willing to do -- and that's put in the time and effort in the offseason,” he said.

Offense will be 'flexible to win some football games'

Reitveld will stay in Brentwood this week while his Indiana school is on spring break (his wife and two kids are getting their house ready to sell – “I have the good job”). And then he’ll be commuting back and forth some, including during Ravenwood’s 10 days of allowed spring football practice over 15 school days, in late April and early May.

Reitveld says his offensive philosophy is to take what the defense gives him, and that he isn’t going to try to run the ball just because he wants to run it, for instance. Athletic director Patrick Whitlock cited Rietveld’s innovative offenses as one reason for his hiring.

“My offense is going to be rigid enough and have enough repetitions to get good at something and be able to hang our hat on it, but not stringent enough to where we can't be flexible to win some football games,” Reitveld said.

During his high school days in Indiana, he played football, basketball and baseball at Mishawaka – joking that "if you've never seen me play, I was really good. If you've seen me play, then I can't lie.” The area was adjacent to Notre Dame “so I grew up in high school thinking that Indiana was a football state just because Notre Dame was in my backyard.”

Reitveld’s son, Connor, will be entering Ravenwood as a freshman next season and like his dad has been playing football, basketball and baseball. The coach’s sixth-grade daughter, Alyse, has taken dance for nine years and also plays volleyball (RHS just won its first state championship in the sport last fall).

Both are very active in Fellowship of Christian Athletes at their middle school, and one of their first questions was whether Ravenwood had an FCA chapter, Reitveld said.

His wife, Celeste, is currently an elementary school counselor and will also probably look for a position in the Williamson County school system, he said. The family will also be looking for a new church home here and really enjoys their small group at the Church of God they attend.

“In the short term it's going to be kind of crazy,” Reitveld said. “I'm a very routine and scheduled and systematic type of person, and now with me trying to finish up my teaching for the school year in Indiana and doing my job at both ends, and my family -- my son's going to start playing baseball here pretty soon -- it's going to be kind of crazy.

“A year from now hopefully I'll be sitting on my deck and laughing about all this.”