Former Notre Dame football coach Gerry Faust, in December, 1980.Ed Ballots/The Associated Press
Gerry Faust, the gravel-voiced Cincinnati high school coach who lived a dream by becoming the coach at Notre Dame, has died. He was 89.
Notre Dame said in an e-mail to the Associated Press that the family confirmed Mr. Faust’s death. No details were immediately provided.
Mr. Faust guided the Fighting Irish from 1981 through 1985, compiling a record of 30-26-1. He succeeded Dan Devine as coach of Notre Dame and preceded Lou Holtz.
“I have always loved Notre Dame and still do,” he said after he was fired following the 1985 season.
He spent the next nine seasons as the head coach at the University of Akron, bringing the program from Division II to major-college status. His record was 43-53-3 with the Zips.
He remained at Akron after his coaching days, working as a fundraiser and in the development office before retiring in 2001.
It was as a high school coach that Mr. Faust first stepped into the spotlight.
After graduating in 1958 from the University of Dayton with a degree in marketing and management, Mr. Faust accepted his first coaching position as an assistant at his high school alma mater, Dayton Chaminade. His father, Gerry Sr., had coached at Chaminade for 49 years.
Two seasons later, Mr. Faust accepted an offer to build a football program at a new high school, Archbishop Moeller, in suburban Cincinnati.
He spent three years constructing the foundation of what would become a legendary program in high school athletics.
In 1963, Moeller’s first varsity team surprised many with a 9-1 record.
In the next 17 years, Mr. Faust’s Moeller teams posted nine undefeated seasons, won 10 city championships, eight regional titles and five big-school state championships.
Four times Mr. Faust’s teams were awarded mythical national championships, each following unbeaten and untied seasons in 1976, ‘77, ‘79 and ‘80.
The 1980 team completed a 13-0 season and capped Mr. Faust’s high school coaching record at a remarkable 174-17-2, a success rate of nearly 91 per cent.
There was a public outcry when Mr. Faust was selected to take over at Notre Dame in the spring of 1981. The school’s administrators were admonished for elevating a high school coach to the most revered position in college coaching.
Mr. Faust’s first team in South Bend went 5-6 and he followed that with marks of 6-4, 7-5, 7-5 and 5-6.
His first Akron team in 1986 went 7-4, but his teams – playing a difficult Division I-AA schedule and, eventually, some of the top teams in I-A – never reached that level again.