The Canfield school board approved the hiring of Joe Ignazio as the Cardinals’ next head football coach Wednesday, officially beginning the post-Mike Pavlansky era.

After spending the last 23 years at the helm of the Canfield program, accumulating a 183-76 record and leading the Cardinals to their first and only football state title in 2022, Pavlansky announced his retirement from coaching in early December. Now, his successor has been chosen, and it turns out the school’s leadership did not need to look far.

Ignazio, who has eight years of head-coaching experience, served on Pavlansky’s staff the last three seasons as the Cardinals’ defensive line coach. In a press release, Canfield Superintendent Joseph Knoll said Ignazio “checks all the boxes” for the job. Athletic Director Greg Cooper also mentioned Ignazio’s hiring will “ensure continuity” in the football program.

While his time working under Pavlansky certainly played a factor in his hiring, Ignazio is not concerned with the pressures that can come with taking over for a longtime coach.

“As a coach, you develop thick skin, and you understand that people will put you under a microscope and examine that to whatever thing they want to. But you can’t waste time on that. Obviously, there are big shoes to fill. Mike has done a phenomenal job, [but] I really don’t look at it as filling his shoes. I’m sure we’ll be compared; people will always look back to the standard he set. But that’s out of my control. I think Mike would be the first one to tell me, ‘Just go and be you and you’re good enough,’ and that’s kind of the message we put forward to our kids as well,” Ignazio said.

Ignazio is a Boardman alumnus, having graduated in 1993. After graduating from Youngstown State, he returned to his alma mater and embarked on a career in coaching. Initially, he coached football, wrestling, and track and field. But over time, football dominated his focus.

After serving on the coaching staff for three different head coaches over a 10-year period, Ignazio got his opportunity to lead the Boardman program in 2013.

The Spartans won just one of their 10 games in Ignazio’s first season. They then won only two the next year. But in Ignazio’s third season, Boardman won six games and made its first playoff appearance since 2009.

Over the following three seasons, Boardman qualified for the postseason twice more. The Spartans went 3-7 in 2019, their worst record in five years, and then went 4-4 and made the playoffs for the fourth time under Ignazio in 2020.

In the first round of the 2020 postseason, the Spartans defeated Cuyahoga Falls 49-0, earning the school’s first home playoff victory in more than a century. After the season, which ended with a second-round loss to Painesville Riverside, Ignazio resigned. He was 32-49 in eight seasons at Boardman.

After submitting his resignation, Ignazio said he thought he would be taking some time off from coaching. But then Pavlansky and Austintown Fitch head coach TJ Parker called with offers to continue doing what he loved.

Faced with a difficult decision choosing between two coaches and programs he respected, Ignazio opted to join Pavlansky’s staff.

“My wife and I had moved to Canfield. We had built a house in Canfield. My kids were attending Canfield schools. … And it was just kind of a — not a no-brainer — but an easier fit for me to be at home and be around my kids. And it bought me some time that I didn’t have as a head coach for a few years to be around their stuff. So that was kind of a blessing,” Ignazio said.

In addition to the proximity to his own family, part of the allure of coaching under Pavlansky at Canfield was the program’s general familial focus, Ignazio said.

“Why I hopped on board so quickly after Boardman was there were a lot of the same foundations that I tried to set at Boardman. Really, Pav is a family-first type of guy, [Canfield is] a family-oriented program. I had two young kids at the time and my son was playing in middle school football, and [Pavlansky] would always make sure to ask me what time I had to be out of practice to make sure that I was going to watch my son play football. So that meant a lot,” Ignazio said.

Looking back on his time as Boardman head coach, Ignazio doesn’t view his eight-year stint as a failure, but he is certain he’s different than when he was leading the Spartans.

“I’ve always looked at education as a lifelong process. It’s not necessarily those things you do wrong, but it’s part of the growth and maturation. Am I the same coach I was at Boardman? Absolutely not,” Ignazio said. “I don’t really look at anything as a failure, just part of the growth process.”

So why now in the process? Why Canfield? And why is Joe Ignazio the right man to lead Canfield football into the post-Pavlansky unknown?

“I’m a family man … But even bigger than that, I’m an educator. I’m a people person, I have a great rapport with people. And those are kind of the characteristic traits that we try to instill in our young people,” Ignazio said. “I credit both of my parents for raising me that way. And the coaches and teachers and people that have impacted my life throughout my career have had an effect on that. I’m a product of — they say it takes a village — I’m a product of that village.”

pbyers@tribtoday.com