Dowling hopes to win over critics as BTHS coach
Current assistant football coaches get 'first opportunity of refusal,' he says
BY WAYNE WITKOWSKI Staff Writer
New Brick Township High School head football coach Patrick Dowling is preparing to take over what he calls "the best job in the state."

Dowling met with Brick Township High School assistant coaches this week to assemble his own staff.

He met with the players on May 18 and with the players' parents later that week to introduce himself as only the second football coach for the storied program's 52 seasons, the previous 51 under the legendary Warren Wolf.

His meeting with the players went well, Dowling said.

"I felt I had a good meeting with the kids to see me and hear me and what I'm all about," he said. "It's everything I thought it would have. I'm honored to be in the position. I had some dialogue with them and thought it went well.

"It's about the kids," he added. "I told them that wins go to them. Losses, you can blame me. That's my commitment to you. No one outworks or outprepares us. I never let anyone blame kids for a loss."

He's not overly concerned about the tight window to prepare for preseason practice that starts in a little more than three months, Dowling, 45, Howell Township, said in a recent interview.

"I've been behind the eight ball before; that's my routine," said Dowling, reflecting on his prior head coaching appointments approved near the start of the fall season. "I'm hitting the ground running."

Wolf retired from coaching in early December. The process of finding his successor took four and a half months.

Wolf had one request when he stepped down. He wanted the Board of Education to appoint one of his assistant coaches to replace him. He called Dowling "a mover" and no "Vince Lombardi."

Wolf is the state's all-time winning coach with 361 victories.

"I have nothing but the utmost respect for what the man has been able to accomplish," Dowling said. "I'm not replacing him, but just to be the second coach at Brick, I'm honored and humbled."

Dowling said the controversy and public response over his appointment have been so contentious that at times he lets his home answering machine take messages and then returns calls right away.

Assistant coaches concerned

One of those areas of discussion is his staff, where many longtime assistants are concerned whether or not they will stay on board. That includes Wolf's son, Warren Wolf Jr., who has been an integral part of thelegacy, along with Len Zdanowicz, a line coach and coordinator of the off-season conditioning program. Zdanowicz was one of the three finalists for the job.

“I have not been contacted,” Wolf Jr. said at the middle of last week. “I won’t be coaching anywhere else. I’ve always been with Brick. [If not on the staff] I’ll take a year off and then decide what I’m going to do.”

Warren Wolf Jr. also has served as the Brick Township High School golf coach.
“There’s no decision,” Dowling said.  “I knew all along I would interview any assistant coaches on [Brick’s] staff who are still interested in coaching. They would get the first opportunity of refusal. That’s my priority right now. There are a number of coaches on the staff who have shown an interest, at least five currently. There’s one more I have to speak to.”

Dowling confirmed reports that he contacted others he knew outside of Brick to be on the staff.

“Did I speak to other people outside of Brick?” he said. “Of course. While waiting [for the Board of Education’s decision], I wanted to see what interest outside of here there was. At this time, none of those people have been contacted since I’ve been hired. I want to have my staff in place by June 1 and then take steps toward [their] approval [of his recommendation to the school board].”

Dowling said he will implement a summer conditioning program that involves workouts “three nights a week, maybe four.”

Dowling has also been criticized by Warren Wolf Sr. and many others for working in too many school districts over the years.

He served as head coach in seven programs and three as an assistant at Neptune.
Dowling said he gave school district officials a five-year commitment to stay in Brick. He will be a special education teacher in the district, a challenging area of teaching that the Cresskill native studied at Springfield College.

“People go to Springfield for physical education,” he said. “I think I was the only special ed major there, but it was what I really wanted to do.”

He is finishing up the school year as a special education teacher at Allentown High School, where he spent one season as the head football coach last year, a team that ended a 31-game losing streak in a 2-8 season. He also has a master’s degree in special education from New Jersey City University.

“I knew this would be the last opportunity to put my name into the ring for a school with such a high quality program,” said Dowling, who said he was also one of the four finalists for the position at Brick Memorial when Fred Sprengel stepped down three years ago. Walter Currie was named head coach and the Mustangs last fall won the NJSIAA Central Jersey Group IV title.

Dowling said his life’s journey prompted his move to different coaching positions. After starting his career as an assistant at his Cresskill alma mater, Dowling spent 12 years as head coach in North Jersey, including the first at Wallington at age 26, three at Fort Lee, and three at Wood Ridge, where it snapped a 30-game losing streak and went 5-4 after a 2-8 campaign in his first season. He then spent one season at Ridgefield and four at Belleville.
Dowling then took an assistant coaching job at Neptune for three years after he bought a home in Howell to live near the Jersey Shore. He said he was one of the finalists for the head coaching job at Neptune when John Amabile stepped down. He also was girls softball and assistant boys basketball coach there.

Dowling then took the opportunity to be a head coach again, this time at Monroe for four years before taking the position at Allentown that was considerably closer to his home. His family includes his wife, Teri, and six children, so proximity becomes important.
“Brick’s very close to my house in Howell,” he said. “More importantly, I heard things about it and the storied program it was.  I wanted to … go to a program that is established rather than establishing it.”

Three of the teams Dowling took over in the past, including Allentown, had glaring losing trends that were broken during his time there.
“I went on board to make traditions and took jobs nobody else wanted,” Dowling said.

Dowling sets goals
“We need to add to the legacy and add to the tradition here,” he added. “We need to build on the legacy and not live off the past and have our own piece of the legacy. The first goal is to win every game. A division title is second goal. Little things can take care of big things. From there, you’re in position to win the state playoffs. You can’t win it if you’re not in it.

“This is the best job in the state,” said Dowling, who also called the Shore Conference where Brick Township High School plays the “best conference overall in the state and I played in a lot of them. The amount of good teams is pretty impressive.”

Brick Township High School last fall ended its season in the NJSIAA playoffs, playing in Group III and returning to the South Jersey quadrant where it lost to Triton. The team then beat Brick Memorial in its Thanksgiving rivalry in Wolf’s final game.

Prior to his last position at Allentown, Dowling took a program at Monroe that he said had one winning season in 17 years and took it to the playoffs for the first time in the middle two years. The team was co-divisional champions in one season.

“They were 6-4 in my last season and I left there with my head held high. One of my assistants became head coach and the staff stayed there,” said Dowling. “I know I’ll be judged on wins and losses at Brick, and I’m OK with that, but every other program I left was in better shape than when I arrived.”

Brick Township in recent years under Wolf has dabbled with different offenses, including a spread set and Delaware wing-t. Dowling said his offense is a multiple pro-I and his defense runs “mainly a 4-3 formation but recently I’ve also used a 4-4.”

As far as leaning to running or passing the ball, Dowling said he establishes his offensive schemes on his personnel. In one season at Monroe, he had a running back rushing for 1,800 yards and in another season had a quarterback throwing for 1,600 and a tailback rushing for 1,200.

“I started out as a defensive guy but now I’ve evolved into an offensive guy,” Dowling said with a laugh. “You have to have all three phases clicking, including the special teams.”
Dowling takes over a program that has hovered around .500 since the 2002 season when it steamrolled through its Shore Conference division before getting upset in the opening round of the NJSIAA playoffs by Manalapan, a weird postseason in which many high powered teams were upset in the early going of the playoffs.

He feels a lot of the groundwork for where he is now was set while he coached at Belleville in the late 1990s in the keenly competitive NNJIL.

“You play so many top teams there, like Teaneck, who we lost to in overtime once, and Don Bosco, a real powerhouse team that beat us by one touchdown in one game,” reflected Dowling.

Dowling now is harnessing that vast array of experiences to win games and win over skeptics. Just like the coaching philosophy of treating a season one game at a time, Dowling is moving forward one step at a time.