Lisbon Welcomes Back a Famliar Face
    Back at the end of the 2007 season, the Lisbon Blue Devils were wrapping up a very disappointing 2-8 season, while head coach Jim Tsilimos had announced that he was stepping away from the game just prior to the end of the year.  It seemed like a pretty bleak time for the Devils program, but it was only the beginning of some very difficult years.  After going 1-29 the past three years, the Lisbon program brought back it's beloved coach "T".
     "I feel like we (him and his staff) started this slide.  I want to get back to playing Lisbon football.  When we play someone, we may not win them all, I want them to walk off the field and say we just beat a very good football team," Tsilimos would say about returning to the place where he won a division 5 state championship in 1995.  "When I left I knew I'd get back in it somewhere.  I didn't know if it would be at Lisbon or where.  When the job opened up, I sat down and talked to the powers that be, I applied, interviewed, and I was lucky and it worked out for me.  It was a good time for me to get back into it, and it was the right situation, but there is a lot of work to be done."
     When he left in 2007, Tsilimos admitted that he was tired of the constant criticism of the program and his coaching.  When asked about those feelings he didn't hesitate to confirm, "Yeah, I was kind of fed up with it.  That criticism is always going to to be there, it's not going anywhere.  It's all over the world, I don't care what your coaching.  It's part of our society, but I understand it's always going to be there.  I'm sure I'm going to be criticized.  You just have to live with it.  They want you to win no matter what."
     He also talked about his new approach to coaching after being away for a few years.  "Something I've learned from being away from it is to be more organized.  We are going to have shorter, quicker practices.  To have a practice that moves.  I use to have long practices, but not in this day and age.  Shorter practices may even help bring more kids out when they see how much time they have to practice."  In fact he already has his summer practice schedule worked out, and is ready to get started.
    The real key to Lisbon getting back to a competitive brand of football, according to Tsilimos, is for the Devils to get numbers back up in the program.  "We need to get back up into the mid-forties.  Last year I think they had around thirty-some kids.  We really need to get our numbers up, and try to think positive.  It started to slide the last couple of years that I was coaching.  Your competing against schools with fifty - sixty players.  It becomes a real numbers game.  I saw that the two years I was at Beaver, we had fifty-some, the numbers were down, and we were competing against schools with sevety-five to eighty players."
     So far those numbers look promising.  "We have weight-lifting two days a week.  It's going to get busy, I got track practice soon, but we got real good numbers.  It's been going real well.  Any given day we have between 20 to 25 kids, and of course we still have kids in basketball and baseball.  We had about fifty-five sign up, but I don't think we'll get that many.  The kids are enthused, they are excited.  I'm real pleased with the attitude, but there is still a lot of work ahead, their are some dark days ahead, I understand that. Right now we haven't lost any yet, everything is good," Tsilimos would say with a slight chuckle.
     Tsilimos pointed out that it will be crucial for the Devils to get off to a quick start, and gain some confidence.  "We have to have a fast start.  We need a win in the first three games.  It's so important to go into the Upper Tier with a couple wins.  And those first three are winnable games for us.  We have to have a fast start."
     He also admitted that the quarterback position will probably be turned over to a younger, inexperienced signal-caller with the graduation of last year's starter Josh Cook.  "We will be running a high-breed stack offense.  We're going to have to run the ball, I know that is so cliche, but we really need to run the football.  We need to play good defense and keep it close to give us a chance in the fourth quarter.  We'll have a basic offense, we are kind of young.  We will be a 4-3 or 4-4 on defense, kind of a high breed defense.  With the different formation you get anymore, you need to spread with the offense."
     We will see if the "new" coach and the Devils have made big changes on August 25th when they kickoff the 2011 ITCL football season against Leetonia in the "Spaghetti Bowl".  It may take some time, but Lisbon fans have reason to be optimistic about the return of coach Tsilimos.