Zeeland West head football coach John Shillito talks to his players before their the D3 regional final game against Forest Hills Central at Zeeland Stadium in Ottawa County, Mich. on Friday, Nov. 15, 2024. Joel Bissell | MLive.com
ZEELAND, MI – In 1982, a 25-year-old John Shillito stepped onto the football field at Comstock Park High School without a clue of all the success that would follow him in the ensuing four-plus decades.
Fresh off a playing career and graduation at Central Michigan University, the Royal Oak native was a first-year prep football head coach trying to stay involved in the game he loved.
“You’re just trying to learn as much as you can and try to get the job done in the best way you can,” he said of his first year at Comstock Park. “In those days as a young coach, it was more about your ability to bring an awful lot of enthusiasm and intensity, and as time goes by and you learn more, you become a little more cerebral and a little more developed in terms of what you understand.”
By now, Shillito has forgotten more than most head coaches will ever learn, and after a 41-year career that has included 340 wins at four different schools, the hall of fame coach is hanging up his whistle.
Shillito announced his retirement Tuesday, and he leaves the sideline coming off a fifth state championship in his 20th season at Zeeland West.
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The thought of stepping down has crept into the 67-year-old’s mind in each of the past few offseasons, and the thought of stepping away at the pinnacle of his profession made for a fitting finale.
But it didn’t make the decision any easier.
“I was leaning that way really for the last several months,” Shillito said about retirement. “In the summer, we kind of thought this might be the direction we take, but weren’t certain, and then kind of came to it as we finished the season, but then wavered on it a little bit because it was so much fun.
“But it’s the right time. It’s the right time for me and my family, and even program-wise, I think it’s a good time.”
Just six coaches in Michigan high school football history have more wins than Shillito, and only 11 have more state championships.
Perhaps the most impressive statistic during his two decades at Zeeland West is the Dux’s 18-4 record in the regional finals and beyond.
“You know who you’re playing against at that point in time and how good those teams are, so I think it speaks to how our kids have been able to rise to the occasion,” he said of that stretch, which includes eight regional titles.
The 2024 run to the Division 3 championship saw the Dux avenge last year’s state semifinal loss against Forest Hills Central, then hold DeWitt 36 points below its season scoring average in a 32-20 state semifinal win.
“Our semifinal win against DeWitt will always be one of my favorites because they were such a prolific scoring offense, and we held them to one touchdown in the first half,” Shillito said. “They ended up with 20 points in the game, and it was such a great accomplishment for our kids and our defensive staff.”
A Detroit Martin Luther King team loaded with future Division-I college football players presented a stiff test at Ford Field, but Zeeland West prevailed for its fifth title in the program’s 20-year history.
“We felt like this year down the stretch, DeWitt and King were the two best playoff teams we’ve beaten in all the time I’ve been here,” Shillito said.
Those final two games provide an lasting memory for a coach that has watched a lot of football over the years, but most of Shillito’s enduring memories involve time spent with his players and fellow coaches away from the Friday night lights.
“I’m a process guy, and I do really enjoy the process, the practices, the camps and things,” he said. “For me, those are my highlights, probably more so than even some of the games, so I’ll miss that part. I’ll miss the relationships, and I’ll miss seeing the kids and the coaches.”
“There are some individual football games that you’ll always remember, but I think the relationships with our staff and also some of the people I’ve been able to coach against,” he added. “We’ve had a great rivalry with Muskegon over the years. They’ve gotten the better of us more than we’ve gotten them, but we played a lot of great football games, and that goes back to Tony Annese and also Shane Fairfield, and the relationship between those two programs has always been special.”
Muskegon football head coach Shane Fairfield talks with Zeeland West head football coach John Shillito after their game at Zeeland Stadium in Zeeland, Michigan on Friday, Sept. 10, 2021. Muskegon defeated Zeeland West 28-20. (Joel Bissell | MLive.com)Joel Bissell | MLive.com
Between his 20 years at Zeeland West and his three-season stint at Comstock Park, Shillito spent 14 seasons at Muskegon Orchard View (1986-99) and four at East Kentwood (2000-04).
Shillito adopted the Power-T offense with some help from another West Michigan coaching legend, Irv Sigler, and guided the Cardinals to state championship game appearances in 1995 and 1999, then led the Falcons to the Division 1 title game in 2002.
He amassed a 340-106 record in his 41 seasons, which earned him induction into the Michigan High School Football Coaches Association Hall of Fame in 2005.
East Kentwood coach John Shillito looks up in dismay at the scoreboard with less than a minute left in the Falcons 36-26 loss to Detroit Catholic Central in the Division 1 state championship football game at the Pontiac Silverdome Saturday afternoon. (PRESS PHOTO/LANCE WYNN) BPNBPN
Shillito had already accomplished a lot by the time he became Zeeland West’s first football coach when Zeeland High split to form two schools in 2005, and his plan when taking over the Dux’s program was to stay for five or 10 years, then call it a career.
But building those relationships with the kids and bonding with his assistant coaches, particularly defensive coordinator Gregg Hoogland, kept him coming back year after year.
“One of the things for me is that for my last 24 years as a head coach, Greg Hoogland’s been my defensive coordinator, and the relationship with him and all the other coaches, but especially Greg and being able to work with him meant an awful lot to me over those years, and I think it probably kept me in it a little bit longer,” Shillito said. “Then, the relationships with the kids – I’ve always said that the world they live in has changed a lot over the years, but the kids haven’t changed that much. They’re still very similar to the kids that I coached back in 1982.”
Shillito doesn’t have any firm retirement plans, but watching some of his former players compete in college football is something he’d like to experience in the fall of 2025.
Mostly, he’s looking forward to traveling with Wendy, his wife of 45 years, and maybe working on his golf game.
“She’s been on the ride the whole time,” Shillito said of Wendy. “We were already married when I started coaching, and so having the opportunity to do some things with her, especially travel.
“I joke that I’m a passionate golfer who’s average at best, so maybe I can work on my golf game, but just looking forward to kind of living life with a consistent schedule and at a pace that probably most 67 year-olds live at.
“There are a few guys that hang around to this age, but there aren’t an awful lot doing it right now, and age is a relative thing – it’s all about how you feel – and I feel good, but I’m ready to kind of step back.”
Whoever becomes Zeeland West’s second football coach in program history will have massive shoes to fill, and Shillito joked that his one piece of advice would be retaining Hoogland as defensive coordinator.
It’s unclear if the next Dux’s head coach will match the standard of excellence the program experienced in its first 20 years, but Shillito said the key will be emphasizing the players’ development as students and young men as much as athletes.
“For us, a big piece was that we’ve always been about an educational culture, and I think that takes any coach a long ways,” he said. “In dealing with community and parents and kids and so on, if you care about how those kids are going to grow as people and how it fits into the educational process, I think it makes your job so much easier, and Zeeland has proven to be a place for me where that’s really been true.
“We didn’t get a lot of distractions from the community or from anything because people trusted that we had the best interest of the kids, and if you want to really have long-term success, that’s the best way to go about it.”
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