Ted Ginn Sr. (official thread)

[SanClementeBuck]

Coach Ginn is a special gift to NE Ohio, and specifically, the east side of Cleveland.

 

[Buckskin86]

LASTING IMPRESSION
Journalist comes away so impressed with Glenville coach Ted Ginn Sr. that he makes him focus of a documentary
Saturday, January 05, 2008
Dennis Manoloff
Plain Dealer Reporter

John Dauphin met Ted Ginn Sr. at a church in Sandusky in the summer of 2006. Ginn had come to give a speech.

Dauphin, a longtime journalist, was immediately captivated by the Glenville High School football coach, enough that the standard feature story would not suffice.

"I asked if I could follow him around," Dauphin said Friday by phone from his home in Columbus. "He said, 'Sure, why don't you follow me for a week?' More than a year later, here we are."

What began in August 2006 was wrapped in November 2007: "Winning Lives: The Story of Ted Ginn Sr." The documentary, released in December, is being televised tonight and Sunday on ONN.

Dauphin wrote, directed and co-produced the film.

"Teddy's as impressive as anyone I've ever been around," Dauphin said. "While others are thinking about or trying to make a difference, he's out there doing it every day."

On the DVD jacket, the 58-minute film is billed as "a powerful look at the legendary high school coach and his efforts to make a positive impact on the turbulent lives of inner-city youth in Cleveland and beyond."

cleveland.com: Everything Cleveland

Watch a clip of the Ted Ginn Sr. documentary
Posted by From staff reports January 04, 2008

Click "play" on the bottom of the screen below to watch a clip of "Winning Lives: The Story of Ted Ginn Sr." The documentary on Glenville football coach Ted Ginn Sr. airs on ONN Saturday at 7:30 p.m. and Sunday at 10 and 11:30 p.m.

Watch a clip of the Ted Ginn Sr. documentary - Cleveland High School Sports News – The Latest Breaking News, Audio Interviews and Scores from The Plain Dealer

 

[OSUBasketballJunkie]

Dispatch

documentary
Story of coach gains national exposure

Wednesday, February 20, 2008 3:16 AM
By Tim Feran


The Columbus Dispatch

Oneyes productions
Ted Ginn Sr., left, and John Dauphin



The locally produced documentary on high-school football coach Ted Ginn Sr., Winning Lives: The Story of Ted Ginn Sr., will receive a national showcase Sunday.
The one-hour documentary, which premiered Dec. 29 on WBNS-TV (Channel 10), will be shown at 8 p.m. Sunday on College Sports Television (soon to become CBS College Sports Network).
Worthington resident John Dauphin was inspired to write and direct the documentary -- his first -- after reading about Ginn's accomplishments and sitting down with the Cleveland

Continued.....

 

[OHSportsFan]

Currently watching Ted Ginn Sr.'s Winning Lives...

good stuff, very fiery coach, but wants things done the right way.

 

[Steve19]

There are a lot of ways to define "success" in life. Ted Ginn Sr. come just about as close as you can to what I think success is. Just think of how many lives he has changed and how his influence will live on through generations! Anyone who thinks one person can't make a difference can learn a lot by looking at Ted Ginn Sr's life.

 

[Buckskin86]

Lack of funds, time put Ginn bus tour on hold
Thursday, June 05, 2008
Bob Fortuna
Plain Dealer Reporter

The wheels on the "Ted Ginn Road to Opportunity" football combine bus tour have come to a stop, at least for this summer.

Glenville High School football coach Ted Ginn Sr. said that because of issues with funding, time and helpers, there won't be a tour of college camps that allows his players to showcase their skills in front of college coaches.

While there are some former Glenville players in the NFL, Ginn says he has not asked them for help. They should know what to do, he said. As a result, the only former player who has offered financial assistance is his son, Ted Ginn Jr., a first-round pick of the Miami Dolphins in 2007.

Lack of funds, time put Ginn bus tour on hold- cleveland.com

 

[OSUBasketballJunkie]

Link

Having The Courage To Be Different

A Cleveland High School Coach Dreamt Big, And Now Teaches At-Risk Boys To Do The Same


CBS) Time for a break from all the bad economic news. Instead ? The Good News, stories to be thankful for, featuring an American who made his community better against the odds. Correspondent Armen Keteyian takes us to Ohio:

Ted Ginn Sr. just might be the most unlikely head of a high school in the country.

A local football coach, he never went to college and doesn't have any teaching or administrative credentials. Yet the school he conceived and runs, the Ginn Academy, is one of the most successful public schools in Cleveland.

"I did so many things different," Ginn said. "I did what other people didn't do. You know what I'm saying?"

"They're going right ?" Keteyian said.

"And I'm going left. Because if you're going right and it's not working, you gotta do something different."

Continued.............

 

[Buckskin86]

Ginn Academy opens school year in new digs
Updated: 8/27/2009

COLLINWOOD --Cleveland's Ginn Academy, made famous by its founder Glenville High School football coach Ted Ginn, has a new home starting Thursday.

The Ginn Academy moves to the former Margaret Spellacy Middle School.

The first Ginn Academy class will graduate at the end of this school year.

It is a great achievement for any student but, as we found out, the Ginn Academy student body does so against some pretty difficult odds.

Meet 17-year-old Devon Hall. He was a transfer from Cleveland Heights High his junior year. Devon hasn't always been this outspoken.

"I kept to myself. I really didn't talk to anybody," Hall said.

Jayrone Elliott transferred from Glenville his junior year.

"I didn't really go to school my freshman year. I had straight F's," Elliott said.

That's who they were. After two years at the Ginn Academy, this is who they are now.

"I'm on the merit roll making good grades and I'm on my way to college," Elliott said.

"I've enlisted in the Army and as soon as I graduate, I'll be stationed over in Germany," Hall said.

Ginn Academy opens school year in new digs

 

[Buckskin86]

Self-Made Educator Fulfills a Vision for Boys in Cleveland
By PETE THAMEL
Published: October 9, 2009

David Maxwell for The New York TimesTed Ginn was a coach and full-time high school security guard in 2006 when he proposed to the Cleveland Metropolitan School District an academy based on his brand of mentoring.


CLEVELAND — A 16-year-old former gang member with a faux hawk waited at a recent high school football practice to approach Coach Ted Ginn, who is known for producing elite college and professional players.

David Maxwell for The New York Times
Ginn at a morning assembly. Ginn Academy classes are smaller than the city’s average, and teachers are asked to be more involved.
He did not want to join the team.

The teenager wanted to enroll at the public school Ginn founded to give at-risk boys enough care, structure and education to succeed. Ginn suggested that the aspiring freshman, Joseph Williams, get a haircut and meet him in his office the next morning.

Williams shaved his head and rode his bike four miles to the school.

“I’m still young,” he told Ginn and the school’s principal, Byron Lyons. “I still have a chance.” After spending 21 days in jail with men facing life sentences, he said, he no longer wanted to be in “that other life.”

http://www.nytimes.com/2009/10/11/sports/11academy.html

October 9, 2009
Ted Ginn: A Life Greater Than Football
By Pete Thamel

Spend a few days around Ted Ginn and it quickly becomes apparent how little of his identity revolves around football.

Ginn is best known as the legendary Cleveland high school coach who has sent more than 100 students to college on scholarship and has five former players in the N.F.L. But Ginn?s identity in Cleveland is that of a successful and innovative educator, as he has parlayed his status as a football and community icon and used it to open a public school in Cleveland for at-risk boys.

For the football coaches who?ve been around him, Ginn?s evolution from his jobs as coach and security guard at Glenville High School to the executive director of Ginn Academy do not come as a surprise.

?Oh gosh,? Ohio State Coach Jim Tressel said. ?You can?t even count how many lives he?s saved.?

Tressel got to know Ginn back when Ginn was an assistant coach at Glenville and Tressel was coming up the ranks at Youngstown State. Tressel clicked with Ginn, who he said always had the players? best interests in mind. Ginn built his connection base around the country by bringing Glenville players on bus tours around the country and raising money to do so. They typically stop at about a dozen colleges and give the Glenville players, most of whom are from urban Cleveland, a window into what college life is like.

?He could have left Glenville 100 times for 100 different things, but he?s always been about helping kids,? Ball State Coach Stan Parrish said. ?From the first day I met him, he genuinely wanted to help kids. That?s hard to find.?

Along with coaching and running a school, Ginn has also taken numerous players in his house over the years. Those who?ve come through include Patriots linebacker Pierre Woods, whose rough upbringing included living in a car.

?I?m not going to say it was a rotating door, but we opened up our arms,? said Ginn?s wife, Jeanette. She added: ?It was a lot of cooking, big pots. A lot of laundry and a lot of discipline making sure everyone was doing the right thing.?

That made for an active environment around the Ginn house, which included Ted Jr., who now plays for the Miami Dolphins.

?We took them all in as family,? Ginn Jr. said. ?We weren?t the richest people in the world, but we did what we could do to help people out.?

Ted Ginn: A Life Greater Than Football - The Quad Blog - NYTimes.com

 

[SEREbuckeye]

Love this guy. Had him autograph an Ohio State hat (only one on that hat), and it sits along side some of my most prized sports memorabilia.

The guy is a class act all the way. He should (if he hasnt) be inducted into some sort of Ohio HOF.

 

[Buckskin86]

Glenville coach?s best victories come off field,
Bob Fortuna, The Plain Dealer, December 04, 2009

Ted Ginn Sr. doing what he does a lot, giving advice and direction to a student. This day it happened to be in Ginn Academy, but he often does it outside of the school. - (Chuck Crow, The Plain Dealer)

Glenville football coach/mentor/adviser Ted Ginn Sr. watches over the morning assembly at Ginn Academy. - (Chuck Crow, The Plain Dealer)

Ted Ginn Sr. talks with Ginn Academy senior Devon Hall on Nov. 2. Ginn?s reach beyond the football field to the students and community is emblematic of ?The Dream of Change? poster. - (Chuck Crow, The Plain Dealer)

Glenville football coach Ted Ginn Sr. gets about five hours of sleep a night but even when he sleeps, one eye seemingly is open.

It's not endless hours of game film and visions of X's and O's that make him restless. Rather, off-the-field concerns with troubled youth, including frequent middle-of-the-night calls, and not just from his football players.

Like the 3 a.m. call Olivia Farr made on a spring Wednesday more than 10 years ago. Her granddaughter, Sune' Stamper, had run away from home.

"I felt my grandma was too strict so I got mad, packed a bag and left," said Stamper, a Glenville junior at the time and a member of the Ginn-coached girls track team.

Ginn knew where to go, driving to the house of one of Stamper's other relatives and simply said, "Get in the car." He wasn't mad and he didn't yell at Stamper on the ride back to her grandma's, but he told her smarter decisions were needed.

A two-hour conversation in grandma's living room among the three followed. Ginn then went home, only to return a few hours later to pick Stamper up for school.

"He was always looking out for me and the others," said Stamper, 26 and an instructor at the John F. Kennedy Recreation Center.

Stamper earned a bachelor's degree in education from Central State, where she ran track.

Ginn's focus never wavers, whether it's the mighty Tarblooders football program as the team prepares for its first-ever appearance in Saturday's state championship game against Hilliard Davidson; directing the growth of his Ginn Academy school for at-risk youth; or serving as deacon or singing in the men's choir at Historic Greater Friendship Baptist Church.

Helping his athletes is part of Ginn's mission -- he wants to save all the troubled children, an obsession that began while growing up in Louisiana with his grandmother Mull Burton.

Lonely childhood in Cleveland

Ginn was born in Louisiana. His parents moved to Cleveland when he was a toddler, but he soon returned to live with his grandmother after his mom and dad separated. At age 11, his mother, Lear Ginn, got custody and he moved back to Cleveland.

"My grandma died of a broken heart not even a year after I moved away because she never got over the fact I had to leave," Ginn said. "My mom died when I was 19 and I believe she, too, died of a broken heart because she never got over my grandmother's passing.

"I had two half-brothers but I was basically an only child so I was by myself after that. Loneliness is a horrible feeling, one I don't ever want any child to feel."

Ted and his wife, Jeanette, met in high school and have been together 35 years. They claim they can't remember the year they were married.

Glenville coach’s best victories come off field, - cleveland.com

 

[Buckskin86]

Riding a Dream to the State Title Game
By GREG BISHOP
Published: December 4, 2009

David Maxwell for The New York Times
Ted Ginn Sr. with his team at Glenville, the first Cleveland public school to play for a state title.

CLEVELAND ? On Thursday, the football team at Glenville High School sauntered into the gymnasium, their bodies swinging to bass beats. This was not a normal pep rally. Recruiters from major colleges lined the walls. A local radio station hosted.

When it ended, the players headed to their final practice before they become the first Cleveland public school to play for a state championship on Saturday. Swept up by euphoria, they bounded past the writing on the wall, two words that summed their season. Making history, it read.

?To take an inner-city school in Cleveland and compete like this, it?s an it-only-happens-once thing,? said Stan Parrish, the Ball State coach and Ohio native. ?It?s something you read about in a book, or see in a movie.?

Glenville has produced the track icon Jesse Owens and the creators of the Superman comic book, but never a state football champion. The high school is located east of downtown, past neighborhoods pocked with boarded-up houses and men sitting on stoops, sipping tall cans of beer on a recent morning.

The majority of the players attend nearby Ginn Academy, the brainchild of Ted Ginn Sr., who doubles as Glenville?s football coach. Earlier this week, they met with a youth minister and scribbled their distractions on scraps of paper.

This is a sampling of what they wrote: ?My father doesn?t want me? ?I used to watch my mom get beat by my stepfather? ?We worry about not having a roof over our heads? ?My mom lost her job and now I have to pay for groceries and bills.?

The players come from all over, from the suburbs to the projects, from neighborhoods infested by gangs and drugs. They come for structure, for father figures, for football, but mostly, they come for Ginn, whom Parrish described as ?where peaceful waters flow.?

http://www.nytimes.com/2009/12/05/sports/05ginn.html

 

[LeBuckeye]

Heartbreaker for Glenville tonight. They really had the game, unfortunately Christian Bryant couldn't reel that ball in. They didn't lose because of Ted Ginn Sr. though, he had them in position to win it.

 

[Ttown]

Miami Dolphins | Sun-Sentinel Blogs: Miami Dolphins: Titans RB Chris Johnson rips Dolphins WR Ted Ginn Jr.


Ted chickens out in race against Chris Johnson. Or so Johnson says....

That belongs in Ted Ginn's thread. (BB73 edit - posts were moved)

Kudo's to Ginn Sr. for all he has done for Ohio.

 

[Buckskin86]

Cleveland Councilman Michael Polensek says he was blindsided by Ginn Academy move
By Thomas Ott, The Plain Dealer
January 25, 2010,

The academy moved this school year into the former Margaret Spellacy Junior High. The school district's transformation plan calls for the academy to move again, this time to Glenville High School.Related stories:

Boys high school, Ginn Academy, a bright spot for Cleveland district

18 Cleveland schools to close as part of transformation plan that aims to raise academic achievement CLEVELAND, Ohio ? As Cleveland City Council awaited its briefing on a proposed school reform plan early this month, Michael Polensek braced for the possibility that Collinwood High School, a neighborhood landmark and his alma mater, would close. But what he heard struck him like a lightning bolt on a sunny day.


While Collinwood was spared, Ginn Academy, a heralded all-male high school that Polensek welcomed to his ward just last fall, will move again. District chief Eugene Sanders intends to relocate Ginn to Glenville High School, which will also house a new girls-only program. Neighborhood students not interested in single-gender classes will have to go elsewhere.

Relocating Ginn to Glenville could replace a low-performing school with one that gets good marks, district officials say. But Polensek, who had lobbied long and hard to land Ginn, feels confused, betrayed and, as a taxpayer, swindled.

He wanted to know why school officials would spend nearly $800,000 to prepare the former Margaret Spellacy Junior High for the boys, then abruptly abandon the building? Add in repairs made a few years earlier, and the tab rises to about $2.5 million.

"At no time did anyone talk about this being a temporary site," said Polensek, who used his pull to get streetlight and paving improvements made near the school. "Never. Ever. This was going to be the site."

Ginn Academy, which will graduate its first seniors in June, opened three years ago to provide guidance for boys "at risk" of going astray. The regimen of discipline, compassion and respect, as well as promising test scores, has earned notice, including a feature last year in the New York Times.

Polensek and others question whether Ginn, designed for a specially chosen group of 400 to 500 boys (current enrollment is 276), can survive in a building that is open to an entire neighborhood and has space for 1,500 students. They also wonder whether boys will stay fixed on their studies if girls are in the vicinity.

Some suspect that district officials moved Ginn because it was an easy out. They could have merged Collinwood and Glenville, two struggling schools with low enrollment, but did not want to put up with the political and turf battles it would spark.

Cleveland Councilman Michael Polensek says he was blindsided by Ginn Academy move | Metro - cleveland.com - cleveland.com