Coach Croshaw’s second chance

James Mello

As a newly hired Mesa head football coach, Greg Croshaw is tasked with turning around a football program that won one game last season. Fortunately, that is not an unfamiliar task for Croshaw. “Every one of us are a result of the experiences we`ve had,” Croshaw said. “This is a very similar situation to when I took over at Dixie State, they won one or two games the year before I was hired. (During) my first season, (we) were able to put together a 5-5 record, and with the freshman (gaining) experience during that season the next season we were able to win the second ever Valley of the Sun Bowl.”

In 24 seasons at Dixie, Croshaw’s team went on to a 214-56 record and won 17 WSFL conference titles and was the national runner-up twice.

Croshaw believes that Mesa football can and will be turned around.

“All you have to do is to change a little bit of the culture and attitude,” Croshaw said. “The pieces are in place here, it`s just going to be about us doing the little things right. If it’s worth doing, it’s worth doing right.”

“Most people see Mesa on the schedule and think that’s a win at (that) point and it’s up to us to change that,” Croshaw said. “We are going to prepare these guys to win from spring ball to the season. Will we win them all, who knows? But I will go in expecting to win every game.”

How Croshaw is able to recruit at Mesa will be a key to his success. At Dixie and during his career in general, Croshaw has been able to build up many connections he believes will help him to recruit.

“It’s amazing and interesting to me,” Croshaw said. “In the first couple weeks, the (number) of contacts around the country that I had utilized for years at Dixie have been coming out of the woodwork.”

Croshaw has built a reputation upon giving players who had troubles in some way at other teams an opportunity to play for him.

“There should be an opportunity for people who didn’t do things the right way the first time to correct their mistakes,” Croshaw said.

While giving players opportunities at Dixie, academic problems arose for Croshaw’s football team which is why he was fired in 2006.

“Academics have been a struggle in football for a while,” Dixie State athletic director Dexter Irvin said following the firing of Croshaw. “In today’s academic climate we think it’s critical that all student-athletes (are) student-athletes.”

“That’s water under the bridge,” Croshaw said. “That was a situation where Dixie College was going to become division two, I had presented a plan to bring in quite a number of non-predicting, high-risk athletes with the idea that those (who) made it would not need an AA (Associate in Art) degree and would be grandfathered in. I was trying to get a flying start for going division two and it backfired a little bit, but I don’t regret giving (those) kids the opportunities.”

Croshaw believes that the support system around him will help his players succeed academically and play a vital role in Mesa’s success.

“I was almost embarrassed. I mean now all I have to do is (coaching),” Croshaw sarcastically referred to all the responsibilities he had at Dixie. “I helped with equipments, running grade checks, keeping kids on the right track along with coaching.”

“The support system academically is unbelievably better at Mesa than it was at Dixie,” Croshaw said. “There are people in place here that we can work with academically and allow us to focus on coaching more. You’re only as good as the people around you and it seems at Mesa that those people are in place as well as coaches. The fact of the matter was Dixie wasn’t able to provide the resources academically that Mesa is able to.

“I`ll continue giving young men an opportunity. If it hadn’t been for coaches who took a chance on me and pushed me along the way I’d probably (have been) in Vietnam,” Croshaw said.

  • Mesa Legend Staff

    These are archived stories from Mesa Legend editions before Fall 2018. See article for corresponding author.

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