If any central Ohio high school football coach has earned some benefit of the doubt, it’s Pat Sergio.
Sergio has begun his 55th consecutive season of coaching, and this one finds him at his ninth stop — DeSales, where he is an assistant for the freshman team.
Sergio is working primarily with wide receivers and defensive backs, but he is quick to note that is not necessarily because his grandson, Dax Middleton, plays those positions.
“I don’t want anybody to think I favor him over anybody else,” Sergio said.
Or that he’s not just one of the guys on a staff that includes two other former head coaches in offensive coordinator Mark Crabtree (Dublin Coffman) and offensive line coach Bob Jacoby (DeSales, Hamilton and Hamilton Township) and a third volunteer close to the program in former Westerville North coach Chad Williams. None of them forgot that Sergio spent a decade at rival Watterson, first as an assistant from 1973-77 and then six years as head coach.
“One of the first questions they asked is if I’d be able to put this purple on instead of wearing (cardinal red, one of Watterson’s primary colors),” Sergio said. “I said, ‘I’ll do what I need to do.’
“I’m just happy to be coaching.”
Even as Sergio does not give Middleton preferential treatment, his grandson is the primary reason Sergio’s career has continued. Sergio, who will turn 72 in September, was an assistant for the eighth-grade team at Olentangy’s Shanahan Middle School last year, and the original plan was for Sergio to be on the freshman staff at Olentangy this fall before Middleton opted to attend DeSales.
“It’s just really fun for both of us,” Middleton said. “I’d give him player feedback about what was working and what didn’t. It was his first time at the middle-school level. I like to think I helped him out.”
Middleton is the youngest of three sons of former Ohio State baseball player and Upper Arlington coach Matt Middleton. Older brother Jace, a 2021 graduate of Olentangy, signed to play baseball at OSU but left the program after Tommy John surgery and is a walk-on tight end this fall with the football team.
“(Dax) absolutely loves it; he loves talking football with Pat,” said Matt Middleton, who is in his third year as principal at Hilliard Darby. “I could tell (Sergio) was pretty intense when he was younger, but he’s mellowed out and he’s that grandfather figure. … He’s a very humble guy.”
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A 1969 graduate of Wehrle, Sergio’s coaching career began that fall with his alma mater’s freshman and junior varsity teams even as he was joining the first baseball team at Ohio Dominican. Sergio joined Watterson as a biology teacher and assistant football coach four years later, then went 40-23 leading the program.Get the CBJ Today newsletter in your inbox.
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“He really tried to create well-rounded football players,” said Matt Maglicic, a 1986 graduate of Watterson who played center as a 130-pound sophomore and matured into a defensive back before becoming an All-American defensive end at Findlay.
Maglicic and Sergio now live within walking distance in northwest Columbus.
“He would put everybody through lineman drills and different skill drills,” Maglicic said. “Especially with the younger players, (it was) ‘let’s see what these guys do,’ not just assume they can only do this or that.”
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Sergio spent the 1984 season as Capital’s offensive line coach and assisted at Westland the next two years before going 54-196 as Centennial’s head coach from 1987-2011.
Brian Thomas, who played for Sergio at Centennial from 1999-2002, is now DeSales’ quarterbacks coach.
“He always did a good job of making sure that our practices, our weight room, everything was on par with the suburban and Catholic schools,” Thomas said. “I thought our paths were done after graduating. I’ve coached several places … and I had seen him at baseball games as well, but my first day at DeSales, I saw him and it was nice to see my old high school coach.”
Sergio, who retired from full-time teaching in 2012 and spent the 2012-21 seasons as an assistant at Grove City Christian, relishes coaching at lower levels.
“I consider myself a teacher, educator and coach, and a lot of people think when you’re teaching, every class period is the same,” Sergio said. “That’s not true. It depends on the makeup of the students you have, and the same thing holds true with football. What you’ll be able to teach depends on the athletes you’re working with.
“With high school kids, maybe you do some things you can’t do with an eighth-grader or a freshman. The joy I’m getting out of this is teaching them the fundamentals to maybe make them great players as they go along.”
