Coach Dawson Changes Career Track
By Dani Messick
ELKHART — “It was athletics that kind of gave me that direction and kept me out of trouble. I was one of those ‘at-risk kids’ in high school and it was football that really helped me,” explained Tim Dawson, former head football coach at Concord High School.
Recently inducted in the Concord Athletic Hall of Fame, as well as the Indiana Football Hall of Fame, Dawson left coaching last year as possibly the longest tenured coach at Concord High School after 26 years.
Dawson attended Ball State University to become a teacher and coach. His first coaching position was at Saint Joseph’s High School, but he didn’t stay long after realizing that to advance as a coach he’d need to teach at a public school. In 1986, he began as an assistant coach under Dick Pile at Concord.
“I really thought I was just going to be there a few years and apply for some head jobs,” he explained. But in 1989, when Pile left, Dawson became head coach and soon after became dean of students.
During his tenure at Concord, his teams won eight NLC championships, six sectionals, four regionals and two semi-states, finishing as state runner up in 1998 and 2006.
“We can’t kid ourselves, winning does help foster a good attitude and good morale. I think the turning in our program was when we finished in 1992 and we didn’t win a game,” Dawson said. “That’s when I knew that we had to have a foundation in our program, something to believe in, because you experience these hard times. I realized we need to have priorities.”
Dawson’s program focused on five over-arching principles for his team mates to live by: faith, family, future, football and friends.
“I really had to feel like I was blessed that I had parents and coaches who bought into the program and kids who bought into the program and I was very fortunate to live in a community that didn’t care just about winning, but they looked at the whole picture of what we were trying to do,” he said. “I’ve been around long enough to know that if you surround yourself with good people, good things are going to happen.”
“I had to retire, so I could get a job to retire,” he explained of his 2015 departure from the sidelines. “My family made a lot of sacrifices for me to chase my passions. We all go through life changing events, but I can almost guarantee that everyone is going to go through life changing experiences. Some are great, some aren’t so great, but they make you stronger. And of course you have a choice; you can either wallow in self pity, or you can brush yourself off and believe in your faith.”
As sales manager for BBC Distribution in Elkhart, Dawson chooses to see even his position as manager as a type of team to be coached.
“It’s a very competitive market, everybody’s competing for business,” he said. “It’s different, it’s challenged.
“A lot of people ask me if I’ll ever coach again and I never say never because you don’t know what opportunities are out there. Right now, I have no plans. I enjoy what I’m doing and financially it’s a good situation and for my family. The thing I miss in coaching is I miss the relationships, I miss the coaches, I miss the Friday nights. But change has been good for me.”