HIGH SCHOOL FOOTBALL

Football returns home for Joe Donovan in Lone Tree

By Paul D. Bowker
Posted 8/12/22

LONE TREE

The August sun was hot, bearing down on nearly 30 Lone Tree football players as they contemplated the “tire” drill.

Big tractor tires, that is.

Shirts came off. Let the …

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HIGH SCHOOL FOOTBALL

Football returns home for Joe Donovan in Lone Tree

Posted

LONE TREE

The August sun was hot, bearing down on nearly 30 Lone Tree football players as they contemplated the “tire” drill.

Big tractor tires, that is.

Shirts came off. Let the huffing and puffing commence.

Head football coach Joe Donovan stood in the middle of those Lions, instructing his players and assistant coaches precisely how this strength drill is supposed to work.

Everybody, even the quarterbacks and the wide receivers, were in on this one.

The team split into four groups, each lining up behind the huge tires. The idea is, a player gets his hands underneath the tire, flips it, then jumps into the middle of the tire and jumps out, followed by the next player. Wash, rinse, repeat.

And once each group goes the length of the practice field in this Sisyphus-like drill (remember the Greek mythology in which Sisyphus rolls a boulder up a hill for eternity?), all the players in each group hoist the tire above their heads together in an act of triumph.

And there stood Joe Donovan in the middle of it all, entering his 22nd or 23rd year of high school football coaching, not really knowing the exact number of years because it’s just been so long.

But this time he’s home.

After helping to run Highland High School’s football program as an associate head coach with Scott Morel, and watching his son Owen play for the Huskies, Donovan is back in Lone Tree where it began for him more than 20 years ago. He met his wife here. He has a home here. His first job as volunteer assistant was here in the mid-1990s.

“It’s kind of full circle for me,” Donovan said.

But it wasn’t planned this way. When Donovan and Morel left Highland’s football program after last season, the plan was to watch Owen, now a sophomore at William Penn University in Oskaloosa, play for the Statesmen and another son, Bailey, who is an assistant football coach at Iowa Central Community College in Fort Dodge.

Then, Aaron Bohr, who had been Lone Tree’s head football coach, accepted an assistant coach and staff teaching position at Center Point-Urbana so that he could work closer to his family’s home in North Liberty. The Tree had an opening.

“When this all kind of came together, it got me excited because this is where it started for me,” Donovan said.

And truly, it came together. In addition to joining Lone Tree’s staff as a physical ed instructor, he is school transportation director and also a coordinator at the Lone Tree Wellness Center. His wife, Carmen, is a secretary in the superintendent’s office. Another son lives at home in Lone Tree.

Joe can walk to work.

“I haven’t had that in a while,” Donovan said, “so it’s kind of nice to experience that again.”

But in the middle of that football move from one small town to another, Donovan finds himself in the middle of a somewhat foreign world of eight-man football and starting a week earlier than most other football teams.

“I’m kind of excited a little bit about that challenge,” he said. “So that’s the other thing that kind of had me. It’s something different. It’s kind of unique and I’m learning little nuances of the game.”

And here’s the funny part: Instead of coaching a wide-open offense, as he did at Highland, he’s going to coach the defense.

“I get the really true hard job in eight-man,” Donovan said, laughing, “that’s trying to stop everything.”

Donovan is taking the defense because Kale Render, an assistant coach last year, has worked with the offense. That’s the kind of guy Donovan is.

“I think it made more sense to keep him where he was comfortable,” Donovan said.

Harry Miller is also back as an assistant. Harmon Miller, Harry’s younger brother and a former Lions star, will also coach. The volunteer assistants include Morel, Zack Hebl and Randy Ball.

Because Lone Tree will have a game in “Week 0,” the week before most other teams play their openers, the Lions started practice last week and won’t have the advantage of playing a scrimmage this week before the regular season begins Aug. 19 at Midland.

Talk about going right into the fire.

“I know it’s a new game,” said Donovan, who has also coached at Montezuma and Pekin. “You have to have hybrid players almost. … They may be a linebacker, then the formation changes and they may be a corner(back). It’s kind of unique. It’s kind of fun in a way to try to figure it out. I like trying to solve that puzzle.”

But this one isn’t a 500-piece jigsaw puzzle.

It’s football. Eight pieces.

Oh, yes, it will be fun.

News columnist Paul Bowker can be reached at bowkerpaul1@gmail.com. Follow him on Twitter: @bowkerpaul.

Lone Tree, football, Joe Donovan