Dave Stahler excited to get to work as Berks Catholic’s new football coach
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Dave Stahler had no plans to become a high school football coach.
That all changed with a phone call the day before the start of practice in 2001. Holy Name needed a freshman coach. Stahler, still a student at Kutztown University, was asked to take the job.
“I absolutely loved every bit of it,” he said of his first coaching experience. “(After that) I wanted to be involved in every part of the program that I could.”
More than 22 years later Stahler is now in the position of hiring coaches after being named head football coach at Berks Catholic.
The long-time Saints assistant coach was elevated to that position Monday. He replaces Rick Keeley, his head coach at Holy Name. Keeley, the only head coach the Saints had ever known, resigned last month after 38 years as a head coach, at Holy Name, Hamburg and Berks Catholic.
Stahler was expected to be next in line at Berks Catholic. He was tabbed as associate head coach 11 years ago, and he and Keeley talked often about him one day taking over the program.
“Dave put himself at the forefront of candidates a long time ago,” said Berks Catholic athletic director Bill Hess. “These kids are getting someone who has focused, in the last 15 years, on being a head coach, and being head coach at Berks Catholic.
“They’re getting a guy who loves them, a guy who has as much knowledge as anybody in the game and they’re getting a guy who will do anything for them; he’ll do anything for the program.”
The 44-year-old Stahler, a 1998 Holy Name grad, met with the players Monday morning.
“I’m really excited to get to work,” Stahler said. “We haven’t been great the last couple of years and we want to get better. Now that we’re certain (about the direction of the program) we want to get to work with greater intensity and great focus.”
Stahler has work to do.
The Saints finished 5-6 each of the past two seasons after 11 straight winning seasons following their debut in 2011. Their history includes one of the greatest runs in Berks football history, including three straight District 3 championship, from 2015-17.
Stahler will need to replace 13 seniors and find a new offensive coordinator, a role he filled since 2014.
He knows the ins-and-outs of the program. As associate head coach he was responsible practice scheduling and many of the day-to-day tasks of running a football program. In recent years he took more of a hand in offseason duties as well, such as running the weight program and offseason training.
“He’s ready to move the program forward in a way we haven’t seen before,” Hess said. “He’ll give these kids a spark and a little bit a change so they’re ready to go.”
Stahler said his biggest challenge will be filling the void left by Keeley.
“We’re replacing a really, really experienced, good football mind,” Stahler said. “Hopefully he’ll watch some of our games and we’ll get some input from him.”
Another challenge, Stahler said, will be preparing for a lot of new opponents. Berks Catholic moves from Section 4 of the Lancaster-Lebanon League to Section 5 for the next two seasons. The Saints will play teams such as Schuylkill Valley, Lancaster Catholic, Columbia and Annville-Cleona, teams they haven’t faced recently. That means they’ll need to do a lot of offseason film work to get up to speed on the offenses, defenses, and personnel they’ll be facing.
“We’re trying to get a book on guys we haven’t seen,” Stahler said.
Priority one, Stahler said, is a renewed focus in the weight room during the offseason. The Saints got away from that and it cost them on the field.
“Our big focus needs to be in the offseason and getting better,” he said. “We had a great senior class this year that got us back in the weight room, and we just need to continue to build on that.”
Stahler hopes to get Dane Miller of Garage Strength more involved in the program. Miller does the programming for BC’s offseason strength workouts but Stahler would like to get him back in the building and to be more hands-on, as he was several years ago when the Saints put together a string of seven straight 10-plus win seasons and seven consecutive district championship appearances.
Stahler wants to increase numbers in the program. Part of that means recruiting top athletes from other sports at the school.
“We want to get guys who play other sports out for football and get guys who play football out for other sports,” he said. “In our school, that’s really important. Developmentally, having multiple roles on different teams is so important. The kids are missing out on opportunities to learn, grow and have fun (if they’re playing only one sport).”
Stahler was a three-sport athlete at Holy Name, playing basketball and baseball as well as football.
He was an all-league offensive lineman for Keeley, graduating in 1998. Holy Name shared the Inter-County League championship Stahler’s sophomore football season.
He was a starter on the Blue Jays’ 1998 PIAA Class A basketball finalist, which won a District 3 championship and won 27 games.
Stahler joined Keeley’s coaching staff at Holy Name 2001. He began teaching at Holy Name in 2007 as a math teacher after graduating from Kutztown University with a B.S. in Secondary Education, Math and Physics. He completed his master’s degree in Math Education at Kutztown in 2010.
Stahler teaches at Berks Catholic and serves as Science Department chairperson.
In 2012, the Saints’ second season, Stahler was elevated to associate head coach. In 2014 he took over as offensive coordinator. He called plays for Berks Catholic teams that won District 3 championships in 2015, 2016 and 2017, going a combined 37-5 those three seasons.
Keeley began his 48-year coaching career at his alma mater, St. Pius, as an assistant for his high school coach, the legendary Jim Mich.
He finished with 280 victories, fourth-most among District 3 coaches, five district championships and 11 league championships. He was named Coach of the Year 10 times by his peers.
Stahler also worked as an assistant basketball coach for the late Lloyd Wolf and said he’ll apply many of the principles he learned from him, as well as from Keeley, in his new role.
“They were so good at how they treated people, at how they made people feel special,” Stahler said. “They certainly did that for me.”