Football is awesome. But it’s not important – at least not from the perspective of Henry Ford II head football coach Mike Szalkiewicz. “Holy crap,” Szalkiewicz said.
“A head football coach saying football is not important. “Our brains are important, as is the magic of believing.” Football games have been hard to win recently for the Falcons.
Szalkiewicz ended his first season at Ford in 2022 with one win. They bumped that number up to two in 2023. It’s not new.
In fact, Ford football hasn’t had a winning regular season since 2015 and they haven’t finished with a season with a winning record since 2011. During that time, Szalkiewicz was doing plenty of winning. A former De La Salle defensive line specialist, Szalkiewicz was there when the Pilots flipped the script from being just another Catholic League program to being one of the premier programs in the state, something that’s still true today.
In fact, he could still be with the Pilots if he wanted to – which would’ve come with additions to his already populated ring collection – but he chose Ford. Szalkiewicz has chosen to be walking proof that flipping the script on a football program is possible in front of high schoolers who have never seen it. So are his assistants, all of whom have played for him at one point or another.
For a program rich with poverty, that’s step one. “The first people that have to buy into what we’re doing here is our coaching staff,” Szalkiewicz said. “I brough.