By John Raffel
Brad Gross has a long history of being a coach at Beal City. He spent 12 years as head junior varsity coach and two as varsity offensive coordinator, so it seems fitting that he would return as the Aggies’ new football coach.
The Aggies lost in the Division 8 state semifinal round last year after two consecutive runner-up finishes. Gross took over as coach in April, after not coaching the previous two seasons. “I was building a house and taking care of three kids,” he said.
Gross has three sons, aged 6, 4, and 2. Now that they’re older, he felt the timing was right to return to coaching.
“I never actually wanted to quit, but sometimes you have to do certain things,” he said.
The first months of his tenure have been filled with typical preseason activities. “We’ve been doing kind of most everything in-house with weighlifting and that kind of thing,” he said. “We did a 7-on-7 with Suttons Bay and had our own camp. We haven’t really gone out to do other things. We’re trying to get everyone on the same page.”
Beal City has been a perennial power the past few decades, and Gross wouldn’t be surprised if the tradition continued.
“We have talent and kids that are dedicated,” he said. “We have close to 30 for varsity and JVs. The program should be pretty strong. We lost some key players every year, but then you have certain guys step up. You move on and go to the next year.
“The quarterback’s coming back, which is Tucker Gross, my cousin,” Brad Gross said. “Chase Rollins will be back.
“We still want to be able to run the football. We might pass a little more than we have before. I’m not saying we’re going to run the spread or anything like that.”
It’s Gross’ first varsity head coaching job, and “the biggest challenge is all the paperwork and the stuff that you don’t really see,” he said. “The biggest thing is ordering jerseys and making sure you have equipment and all that stuff. The administration helps with some of it. Most of it is my job.”
Gross said that there’s no secret to the program’s continued success. “The key is tradition,” he said. “A lot of these kids see winning, they know that have to work hard and dedicate themselves to football if, at a small-town school, you’re going to be good at it. We’re blessed that we have some pretty good athletes.”