Martinelli reflects on winding road to coaching career at Montpelier

So toward the end of the season, Martinelli told Montpelier head coach Steven Brancheau and the rest of the team the 2018 season — his 14th in some way volunteering as an assistant coach for the Locomotives — would be his last.

Martinelli said it’s a tough thing to step away from, but for the sake of his health, he knows it’s the right move.

“It just got to the point where physically, my back and my neck and the cold and climbing that 20-foot tower at 66 ... it was getting to be too hard,” Martinelli said. “

Coaching wasn’t always something Martinelli expected to get into. His father, Fred, was Bryan’s head coach in the 1950s and went on to a Hall of Fame coaching career at Ashland University. So coaching was in Martinelli’s blood, but it wasn’t something he got into until later in life.

After attending Otterbein University in Westerville, Martinelli joined the military as a missile operations officer in the United States Air Force and moved to California in the early 1970s.

Martinelli moved back to Ohio with his wife Nedra in 1981 to attend Ashland Theological Seminary and study to become a pastor. He eventually became a youth pastor at a church in Pennsylvania for 12 years before moving into a similar position at a church in Fort Erie, Ontario, a town just across the Niagara River from Buffalo, New York.

It was in Canada where Martinelli got his first coaching experience. A friend at Martinelli’s church was resurrecting the football program at Fort Erie High School and asked Martinelli if he’d like to help coach.

“Thinking about Ohio and football, you don’t just ask anybody off the streets if you want to help coach high school football. You just don’t do that,” said Martinelli, who didn’t take the offer seriously at first.

But when Fort Erie began practice and Martinelli was nowhere to be found, the coach gave him a call, wondering where he was.

“He said, ‘Why didn’t you show up for practice?’” Martinelli said. “And I said, ‘Are you serious?’ and he says, ‘I need you.’”

For the next four years, Martinelli coached defensive backs and wide receivers and helped Fort Erie go from a grassroots program to one that scratched and clawed its way to league champions.

In 2004, however, Martinelli and his wife were on the move again, this time to Montpelier, where Martinelli took a pastoring job at New Beginnings Church.

Within a few months of living in Montpelier, Martinelli quickly got involved with the Montpelier football program under then-head coach Joe Brigle.

For the past 14 years, Martinelli has primarily served as the filmer for practices, but he’s come to mean so much more than that, whether it’s offering extra encouragement to the players on sidelines, doing work with the Fellowship of Christian Athletes, or simply fulfilling whatever role he can.

“Mike was a volunteer and he did whatever I’d ask of him,” Brancheau said. “He did the most thankless jobs. He’d film all our practices and he’d be up in the tower during two-a-days and if we weren’t in filming sessions, he’d be down snapping for quarterbacks.

“Those are things that every coach, they need to have those people doing the things behind the scenes. ... I’ve come to call Mike a good friend of mine and I respect him immensely.”

In addition, Martinelli began to serve as a part-time substitute teacher in Montpelier’s school district, and after retiring from pastoring in 2016, upgraded that role to full-time. By now, Martinelli has known many of Montpelier’s kids since they were young, which has allowed him to have an even bigger impact on their lives.

“Everybody knows him and you know what to expect out of him,” said Montpelier senior football player Andrew Frisby, who’s known Martinelli since he was in elementary school when his older brothers played for the Locos. “Whenever you’re down, even at school, you can always count on him for some words of encouragement.

“People don’t even see everything he does for us behind the scenes. ... It means a lot.”

The appreciation even led to the team gifting Martinelli a Montpelier football helmet signed by every team member on one side, with 14 helmet stickers — one for each of his seasons with the program — on the other side.

Martinelli admits he’ll miss both the kids and the coaches next season, but says he’ll still be around from time to time.

“You never stop being a coach,” he says.

And even though he didn’t move to Montpelier until he was well into his 50s, the 14 years he spent as a Loco football coach is the longest tenured job he’s ever had, which makes him a Montpelier Locomotive for life, he says.

“Hebrews, chapter 11, is the biblical hall of fame,” Martinelli said. “There’s a whole list of people in the bible and their feats and exploits with men and women of faith. And so the writer of Hebrews says, ‘We’re surrounded by this great cloud of witnesses and all these people that went before us.’

“I use this with the kids every year, I say, ‘Guys, every single time you step on that field, there’s all these guys that went before you and they’re cheering you on. You may not see them. They may not be in the stands, but their heart is here every Friday night. ... So you have a lot of people that are behind you that you don’t know about.’ ... Coach (Blayne) Bible and I get to join that cloud of witnesses next year.”