The sight at Moeller High School's football scrimmage last weekend was as strange as it was sobering. For the first time in 24 years, Steve Klonne was on the other sideline.

        He spotted the Moeller players getting off the bus, and his heart ached. He chatted with Moeller's coaches and felt awkward. He breathed easy only when the game ended.

        Mr. Klonne is at McNicholas High School now, an assistant coach starting over at age 55. It has been almost six months since he was ousted as coach of one of the nation's most glamorous prep programs — one which in 38 years has produced five mythical national championships, 34 All-Americans and 392 college scholarships.

        Neither Mr. Klonne nor the public has been given an explanation.

        “The stigma is, someone's going to say, "He had to do something wrong to be let go,'” Mr. Klonne said. “You fight that. But it wasn't anything I did.”

        Said Winton Woods coach Troy Everhart: “People say, "What'd he do, hit a kid?' That's the kind of tarnish that has developed on his stellar reputation.”

        Mr. Klonne still professes love for Moeller. His eighth-grade son, David, who has worn Moeller football T- shirts virtually since birth, no longer knows where to attend high school. Mr. Klonne's wife, Mary Ann, is preparing a scrapbook from letters of support.

        “I don't think (the dismissal) sank in right away,” Mr. Klonne said. “I don't know if it has even sunk in now.”

        On Sept. 24, 1999, before Mr. Klonne's 200th game as

        head coach, Moeller principal Dan Ledford made a presentation to Mr. Klonne in the locker room. Mr. Ledford broke down crying, saying, “I hope you're our coach forever.”

        In November 2000, Mr. Ledford asked Mr. Klonne a seemingly innocent question: How much longer do you want to coach? “Oh, five or six years — until David graduates,” Mr. Klonne said. Mr. Ledford asked whether Mr. Klonne needed more free time, a free period to do more administrative things. Mr. Klonne said, “Sure, that'd be nice.”

        By March 1, none of that mattered. Mr. Ledford summoned Mr. Klonne to his office during the last period that day.

        “Remember how we talked about how much longer you're going to coach?” Mr. Ledford said. “Well, it's going to be one year. Or less.”

        “Am I hearing this right?” Mr. Klonne said. “Are you firing me?”

        Despite compiling a 169-48 (.778) record in 19 years as head coach, despite winning two state championships and reaching the final three other times, Mr. Klonne was offered one season as a lame duck coach and the chance to be an assistant thereafter.

        Mr. Klonne, stunned, didn't even ask why. The meeting lasted hardly a minute.

        Mr. Klonne left, stopping by the school at which Mary Ann works to let her know what had happened. They tried to keep the news from David and their daughter, Trisha, but they could do so only a day. When they told them, Mr. Klonne and his wife had no explanation.

        “I've been to his house twice since this happened,” Jim Higgins, a former Moeller assistant coach, said last month. “His wife is weeping all the time. His kids are kind of in a state of shock. Steve looks like a stunned duck.”

        Mr. Klonne would eventually accept the final season at Moeller, then change his mind a month later and resign.

        “I felt emotionally for my family,” Mr. Klonne said. “I asked myself, "Did I want to put them through another season at a school that didn't want me?'”

        Mr. Klonne hadn't seen this coming. He never received a written performance review and said Mr. Ledford had never previously offered criticisms. Mr. Klonne said that in his 19-year reign, he knew of only one parent that went to the principal with a complaint about the program.

        “If you're really concerned about the person, you sit them down and say, "These are the things I'd like you to fix; let's try to fix it,'” Mr. Klonne said. “I never had the opportunity.”

        For a program which owned a 355-66-2 record entering this season and seven state titles, this was no small news.

        There had been some lean years — 6-4 in 1994, 5-5 in '95, 6-5 in '99 — and Moeller hasn't won a playoff game since 1997. But the Crusaders went 9-2 last year, earning Mr. Klonne Greater Catholic League South coach of the year honors.

        When the story broke, and parents and alumni came looking for answers, Moeller initially offered no comment.

        “They could have at least addressed why,” said Marcus Blanks, a running back and co-captain on last year's team. “But I don't think there's a reason that's good enough.”
        Of the change, Mr. Ledford now says, “Any healthy high school program needs new ideas and new direction.”

        He won't address specifics, even to Mr. Klonne. “Anything I would say (publicly) would make Steve look bad, and I don't think anybody wants that,” he said.

        Mr. Ledford, who has aggressively updated the school during his decade-long tenure, saw things he felt needed fixing. Mr. Klonne had to hear the specifics second-hand from brother-in-law Tom Fitz, a former Moeller board member, and Dave Hook, a volunteer assistant coach the past seven seasons.

        Mr. Fitz and Mr. Hook each approached Mr. Ledford for an explanation in the weeks after Mr. Klonne was canned. Mr. Hook's conversation lasted 2 1/2 hours, after which he typed up a five-page summation that he gave Mr. Klonne. (Mr. Hook isn't coaching this season, he says, in part because of what happened to Mr. Klonne.)

        To Mr. Hook, Mr. Ledford defined the order of priorities of Moeller coaches this way: First, manage the program. Second, coach the sport. Mr. Ledford expressed his feeling that Mr. Klonne didn't manage the program well:

        • He felt Mr. Klonne was not proactive in promoting the football program or the school. He wanted Mr. Klonne out more in the community, raising funds, talking to parents.

        Mr. Klonne responds that he and his staff ran a free clinic for interested grade-school coaches, staged an annual youth football camp and spoke at various banquets and clinics.

        • Since 1992, head coaches at Moeller have been responsible for the finances of their sports. Each has an “agency account” used to finance all expenses beyond the necessities of bus travel, equipment repair and the like.

        Mr. Ledford felt Mr. Klonne was lax about raising funds for his agency account, which maintained a balance of about $30,000.

        “I think he meant we could have raised more money and done more,” Mr. Klonne said, referring to out-of-state trips by the basketball and wrestling teams. “It's a lot harder to get 85 kids on a plane to go to Florida to do something we don't need to. We had enough money to run our program the way we've always run it.”

        Mr. Klonne admits he is more likely to spend his free time running conditioning programs than delegating such matters so he can go be an ambassador.

        “In the old days, you could be a football coach,” he said. “They weren't looking for somebody who was also a great fund-raiser, a politician.”

        • Mr. Ledford contended the program lacked discipline.

        The strongest criticism came of three separate incidents in recent years when players walked out of practice. Mr. Ledford felt Mr. Klonne should have dismissed them from the team and that his failure to do so told the Crusaders there were no consequences for their actions.

        Mr. Klonne's retort: “I've had players I've given second chances to, mainly because the player needed us more than we needed them. I felt they needed structure.”

        For example: One of those players who left a practice had lost his father to cancer the year before.

        Mr. Klonne said he has never had a player suspended from a game, except by him. But he said there have been two seasons he felt his team “played on edge a little bit” — 1997 and 2000 — and that the first-round playoff loss to Fairfield last fall was a low point.

        Three late-hit fouls were called against Moeller seniors; Mr. Klonne and Fairfield coach Tom Grippa agree there could have been more. In the game's last half-minute, a Fairfield player was getting up after a tackle when a Moeller playerran up and pushed him down. (The officials didn't see it.)

        Mr. Klonne called Mr. Grippa the next morning to apologize for his team. Soon after, he proposed to Mr. Ledford ideas to head off such behavior, including making outgoing seniors sign statements that would make them accountable for their actions.

        Still, Moeller had five ejections from sporting events in the past school year, tied for the most among Cincinnati-area high schools — and none came in football.

        Mr. Ledford learned that a senior captain told Mr. Klonne before last season that many senior players were using alcohol and/or marijuana. Mr. Ledford felt Mr. Klonne should have suspended some players. Mr. Klonne said he told the player to circulate word that ones caught would be punished severely.

        “(The player) talked in generalities and didn't tell me who,” Mr. Klonne said. “I wasn't going to become a private investigator.”

        In November, Mr. Klonne suggested to Mr. Ledford that Moeller institute random drug testing.
        Several Klonne supporters question Mr. Ledford's support of Mr. Klonne over the years.

        In 1982, when Ted Bacigalupo resigned as coach one year after the legendary Gerry Faust had left for Notre Dame, assistant coach Steve Klonne was hired to take over. One member of the coaching search committee had voted against Mr. Klonne: Mr. Ledford.

        Mr. Klonne was unaware of that until after being let go. He said he thought Mr. Ledford had been a friend. Mr. Ledford frequently attended football fund-raisers at Mr. Klonne's house.

        Many players, coaches and boosters contend Mr. Ledford didn't follow the football team's progress. His attendance at games was infrequent.

        Of the locker-room testimonial, Mr. Hook said, “We never saw Dan Ledford before, and here he was bawling his ass off.”

        Mr. Ledford said he has “absolutely no comment” about what he said that night.

        Mr. Klonne sometimes wasn't allowed to hire the coaches he wanted. Most notably, Mr. Klonne recommended Mr. Everhart in 1997 and was assured by Mr. Ledford that he would be hired, only to return from vacation and learn Mr. Ledford had hired someone else.

        Two of Mr. Klonne's assistants, Mr. Higgins and Tim Schira, were fired by Mr. Ledford. Recently, there had been much turnover on the coaching staff, including five different men serving as offensive line coach the past five seasons.

        Mr. Klonne said he met with Mr. Ledford once about four years ago to discuss whether Mr. Ledford supported the program.

        “He said, as far as if he was supporting football, I should act like he is,” Mr. Klonne said. “I said, "I believe everybody wants the football program to do well, but I'm not sure the same attention is given by the athletic department as was before.'”

        The timing of this change was curious.

        “Steve has been head coach 19 years, 10 years under this administration, and it took them that long to realize he can't do what they want them to do?” said Jim Lippincott, a former Moeller athletic director who's now the Bengals' director of pro/college personnel.

        Mr. Ledford, 53, will retire after the 2002-03 school year. He has overseen numerous bold strokes: the pioneering of a laptop computer program and construction of an information technology center, science wing, gymnasium, and wrestling/weight-room facility.

        Amid those changes, the job of Moeller football coach — for which Mr. Klonne was paid $5,000 annually — took on a new focus. As co-athletic director Dick Beerman said of the hiring of new coach Bob Crable, “We have no concern for the X's and O's of it. Our concern is getting a little stronger control of our program.”

        Said Mr. Ledford: “I think 10 years ago, I would not have felt as strongly that the program needed new direction and change. I think things change a lot in 10 years. Perspectives (change). The school has changed dramatically.”

        Moeller's success is no longer automatic, as it was in the 1970s. With open enrollment, the program sold itself, drawing players from all over Greater Cincinnati. Mr. Faust pioneered a year-round weightlifting program.

        But beginning in 1986, kids could no longer attend Moeller and live outside the parish geographical boundaries. (That rule was dropped in 2000.) Up to and including the 1985 season, Moeller went 232-31-2 (.879) with seven state titles. It has since gone 123-35 (.778), without a state title.

        The talent base isn't the same. From Moeller's 1979 team, for instance, 10 players received scholarships to Division I-A schools, compared to just one on last season's team.

        And now everyone has a weight program. Other local programs have brought their teams to Moeller's level.

        There were critics of Mr. Klonne's conservative coaching style, and those who felt Moeller should still be winning state titles. But Mr. Klonne responds that only one other Cincinnati big-school team has won state since Moeller: Princeton in 1987. “And we've been in the finals three times since '87,” he said.

        Said Jeff Liebert, a Moeller assistant last year who now is head coach at Columbus St. Charles: “I had many a (football) parent who saw me in church that said, "I didn't always agree with Steve, but he got a raw deal.' That was the consensus.”
        Because he is 55, Mr. Klonne was eligible to take a buyout option from Moeller, which he did. He said it's an annual stipend for 10 years, roughly equivalent to a first-year teacher's salary.

        Mr. Ledford also has offered free tuition to Moeller for David Klonne, though he would also rate free tuition at McNicholas as the son of a teacher.

        “He's got to decide: Does he want to play for Moeller or go where I am,” Mr. Klonne said.

        Mr. Klonne has tried to move on with his life. Some days have been tougher, like June 4, when Moeller football parents held a toast of appreciation. Former players and coaches paraded to the microphone for 75 minutes, sharing teary tributes.

        The sentiment was best summed up by assistant coach/former player Tim Odom, who told those in attendance to ask themselves a question: “If you leave your job, will this many people show up, and will grown men cry?”

        Mr. Klonne immersed himself in McNick football as soon as school ended at Moeller in June. His first regular-season game was Friday, a 39-14 victory over Turpin.

        “I've got a lot of feelings for the kids I left, but I've also got a lot for the kids I'm coaching,” Mr. Klonne said. “They've accepted me wholeheartedly. It's been good for me.”

        Now Mr. Klonne has a new identity. He is a changed man. Humble.

        But still befuddled.

        “You give 23 years of your life and wonder why this happened,” Mr. Klonne said. “I'm human.”

Sports Stories

Prep football page What happened to Klonne at Moeller? SULLIVAN: College Saturdays beat pro Sundays PGA Seniors return this week Voska in Southern Ohio Open Monday Best and worst of the week in sports Auto Racing Insider Baseball Insider Why FSN missed Reds' rally Cincinnati high school results High School Insider N.Ky. high school results

Bills 20, Bengals 10
Kitna may win by default
Bennett seems solid No. 2 RB
Bengals-Bills statistics
Reds 4, Expos 2
Reese on the rebound?
Sowers looks set to spurn Reds
Nichting doesn't take demotion lightly
Return to Reds works for Jennings
Fan's-eye view of the Reds
Reds box, runs
UC coach is a lifesaver