Some folks are meant to be assistant coaches, and they're really good at it.
That’s incredibly important in high school football, because those guys play a huge role in teaching kids the nuts and bolts of the game.
Reeths-Puffer’s Jeff Uganski is a perfect example.
Of course Uganski, like most coaches, came up through the ranks dreaming of the day when he would lead his own team.
He got his wish in 2003 when he was named head coach at Reeths-Puffer after eight years as an assistant with the program.
Uganski was certainly not a failure. The Rockets struggled in his first season, posting a 2-7 record, then improved to 4-5 in 2004 and 5-4 in 2005.
Longtime R-P teacher and assistant varsity football coach Jeff Uganski.
He could have stayed on the job, and the team might have continued to improve, but after three years Uganski came to the conclusion that it took too much of a toll on him.
“It was always a dream of mine to be a head coach,” said Uganski, 55. “The only bad thing was I let the stress of trying to turn the program around get the best of me. My personality changed. I was always arguing with someone, and it almost cost me my family.”
Uganski did not leave coaching. He loves football and working with kids too much for that, so he returned to the familiar role of assistant coach.
He’s now beginning his 22nd season as an assistant coach at R-P – the total before and after his stint as head coach.
Reeths-Puffer has been through four head coaches in the 17 years since Uganski had the job – Tim Odette, Kyle Jewett, Matt Bird and now Cody Kater. All of those guys brought in some new assistants when they took over, but Uganski has remained on staff through every change.
Uganski watches practice drills on Sunday with head coach Cody Kater.
Keeping Uganski was a no-brainer for Kater, the former Montague state championship quarterback and offensive coordinator who was named the new R-P head coach last December.
“Someone with that many years of experience, who’s still in love with the craft of coaching, and still wants to grow and gain more information, is someone you want on your staff, someone you can lean on,” said Kater, who has been busy preparing his team for its Thursday night season opener at home against Grand Haven.
“The kids know that every single day he will be the same coach as he was the day before. They know he has years of experience and they trust what he says, He also wants what’s best for the kids, and they see that. Kids don’t really care how much you know until they see how much you care, and Coach Uganski is a living model of that.”
That 'A-ha' moment
Uganski grew up in Muskegon and attended and played football at Muskegon Catholic Central.
He never got the chance to play on one of the many MCC state championship teams. The Crusaders won a state title when he was a sophomore playing JV in 1982, and Uganski was hoping to be called up for the playoffs, but it never happened.
Back in those days the MCC head coach was Pete Kutches, an old-school taskmaster with tough assistants like Mike Holmes, Dean Jewett and Mike Ribecky. They put the players through some hard preparation, particularly at playoff time.
“Three sophomores got called up, but I wasn’t one of them,” Uganski said. “I was a little bit disappointed, but the more they practiced, and the more I heard about what those guys had to go through, I was okay with it.”
After high school he played two years of football at Hope College, but his career was cut short by injuries. He partially tore something in his knee playing basketball the winter after his sophomore season, then completely tore it the following fall.
Uganski confers with a player during team drills on Sunday.
“At that point I asked myself what I was going to do," Uganski said. "I talked to the head coach and asked if I could become a student assistant coach, and he accepted me. I got to sit in meetings with the coaches and see how they broke stuff down. It was a great learning experience.”
After college Uganski served as an assistant coach at Mona Shores under Dean Jewett, one of his former coaches at MCC. In 1990 he landed a full-time teaching job at MCC, and two years later rejoined the Crusader football program as the junior varsity head coach.
In 1995 another former MCC assistant, Denny Barnes, became the head coach at Reeths-Puffer and invited Uganski to join his staff, with a teaching job as part of the deal.
That lasted until 2003, when Barnes moved on and Uganski became the head coach, an experience that brought more emotional trauma than joy.
"I lost about 33 pounds and I wasn't sleeping," Uganski said. "The doctor said if I didn't get rid of that stress I was going to have a heart attack. That kind of answered that."
Uganski spent three years as an assistant coach at Whitehall before returning to the R-P staff in 2009. In 2011 he took a season off but returned a year later when Kyle Jewett became head coach.
After all these years, Uganski has come to some definite conclusions about his role in football and where he wants to be.
The look on his face says Uganski saw something in a practice drill that wasn't quite right.
He knows being an assistant coach is much more to his taste. That’s because he’s a teacher at heart, and for him the practice field is another classroom.
"I have a lot more fun at practice than I do on game nights,” he said. “That’s when I get to teach the kids about the game I love. I’m always looking at how to make the kids better. I’m constantly writing down notes during games – this kid has to work on this, this one has to work on that, we have to work on assignments.
“I get to put them through the drills until they start getting it, then I get to experience that ‘A-ha' moment.”
Uganski also concluded, long ago, that R-P is where he belongs, as a teacher and a coach. He became a full-time teacher at the high school in 1995 and will begin his 28th consecutive year in the classroom next week.
He and his wife Stacey were married just a few days before he got the job at Reeths-Puffer, and they quickly moved into the district because they wanted to be part of the community.
Uganski trails after a player to give him a few tips.
Soon after Uganski learned he had deeper ties to the school than he ever imagined.
“My grandfather on my mom’s side had the last name of Reeths, and I found out that his great uncle, Charles Reeths, was one of the founders of Reeths-Puffer,” Uganski said. “So I had a distant relative who was a founder of the school. I guess it was just meant to be!”
The biggest thing for Uganski was watching his own two children go all the way through the Reeths-Puffer school system. Katharine Uganski graduated in 2016 and Jacob Uganski graduated in 2019.
“My daughter finished third in her class, got into Notre Dame and now she’s in med school at Michigan State.," Uganski said. "My son played two sports and was in choir, and now he’s learning to become a pilot.
“People say Reeths-Puffer is a big school, but kids can find their niche here. I wouldn’t trade the education my kids received for anything. They were exposed to everything.”
"I'm very optimistic'
Uganski has experienced the best and the worst of R-P football, from a win-loss perspective.
He came in during the glory years of the 1990s. In his first season, in 1995, R-P had a 9-0 regular season record before losing in the playoffs. The next three seasons were also very successful, with the team posting 7-2, 8-0-1 and 8-1 records and making the playoffs twice.
The Rockets had a great rivalry with Muskegon back in those days, and the games were always close.
Uganski remembers the final regular season game of the 1997 season against the Big Reds, which ended up tied 28-28 and blemished the Rockets’ otherwise perfect record.
The coaches and players wanted to go to overtime and win, but it had already been determined, before the game, that there would be no OT in the event of a tie.
“The state had not mandated overtimes yet, and that game had playoff implications for us,” Uganski said. “Back then, if we had lost, we probably wouldn’t have made the playoffs, so we had to look at it like, what’s the safest bet?”
Uganski closely watches blocking drills, while a player in the background signals his approval.
More recently Uganski has experienced a less successful era.
There was the 2009 season, when he returned to the R-P sideline after his stint at Whitehall and the team went 1-8. The next three seasons brought a combined record of 8-19.
Hope returned in 2013 when R-P went 7-2 in the regular season, gave Muskegon a tough fight before losing in the last regular season game, then lost to the Big Reds again in the first round of the playoffs.
Things started going downhill again in 2014 and 2015, when R-P went 3-6 each season. Over the past six seasons the Rockets have never won more than five games,and have not been back to the playoffs.
“I can’t put my finger on it," Uganski said. "I’ve been here since '95 when we were going 8-1 and 7-2, but that’s when we were in the old Seaway Conference, and it was pretty much us, Fruitport and Orchard View. Now we’re playing with the bigger guys (in the O-K Green conference) and it’s taken a little bit to adjust."
Hope has been renewed with the arrival of Coach Kater, who is only 30 and has brought a lot of new passion and enthusiasm to the program. The players seem like they’re fired up and having fun at practice, and that’s an important first step, according to Uganski.
“We’ve been trying to promote the energy and the fun, and the kids have been like ‘Let’s do this,” Uganski said. “We purposefully high-five and those types of things that may not have been done in the past, to keep them interested.”
The Rockets practice offensive plays on Sunday, four days before their season opener.
That doesn’t mean the coaches have been easy on the players.
“We are coaching them hard,” Uganski said. “We love them all, but our job is to get the best out of them. It’s coming along.
“I’m very optimistic. I like Cody’s plan – let’s build a culture and go from there. We just have to keep developing the kids. I think they have lacked confidence in the past. We have to have that mentality like they have at Mona Shores and Muskegon – nobody can beat us.”
While the Rockets are fired up for the new season, they are also very young, with only a handful of returning starters from last year’s team. When asked what fans should expect this season, Uganski said steady improvement would be a very good sign.
"I’ve never been very good about predicting wins and losses, but you’re going to see an improved product,” he said. “We are young and inexperienced but we’re going to be better. The kids are buying in and having fun.”
When asked how long he will remain on the Reeths-Puffer sideline, Uganski had a more definitive answer.
“As long as they will have me,” he said.