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Jimmy Linn ’01
In his first year as head coach
A
After 16 years in one place,
Jimmy Linn ’01 knows
exactly how the land lies.
The back of his hand is no
more familiar.
Here at New Haven High School on the
east side of Allen County, Linn can walk
the hallways blindfolded. He knows all
the kids by their first names. And the
grounds and locker rooms of John Young
Field, New Haven’s football stadium are,
especially in the fall, his home away from
home – even if it’s not exactly the same
John Young Field it used to be.
So what’s new this particular fall?
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Notes from the doctor. So to speak.
“Yeah, it’s a lot of the little things that
are new for me,” says Linn, who this fall
replaced Jim Rowland as New Haven’s
head football coach after 16 years as
Rowland’s assistant. “Like now I’ve got
to get all the physicals, and all the little
stuff. But the coaching is great, and the
transition has gone very smoothly.
“I kind of know what I’m getting at New
Haven, kind of know ... what kind of kids
I’m gonna have. And same thing with
them. They know me – I’ve known some
of these kids since they were in middle
school – so things have transitioned very
smoothly.”
And it’s not as if Linn hasn’t been preparing
for the transition half his life. A linebacker
for head coach Dave Harms at Manchester,
he was second-team All-Hoosier Heartland
Athletic Conference his senior year in 2000,
and coaching was always where he was
headed.
A physical education major, he went back
for an extra semester to do his student
teaching, and helped coach the linebackers as
a coaching intern that fall. There he worked
under the tutelage of defensive coordinator
Tyson Silveus, his old linebackers coach and
the man after whom Linn patterns much of
his coaching style.
“He would be my mentor,” Linn says of
Silveus, now the defensive coordinator at
Valparaiso University. “He was the reason I
came back (as an intern), and I try to model
my coaching around how he coached us, and
his intensity.
“I knew I wanted to coach my entire time (at
Manchester). But that really put the frosting
on top of the cake for me and let me know
that was really my passion.”
At New Haven, Linn inherits a program
Rowland built into one of the more solid 4A
programs
in northeast
Indiana. The
Bulldogs have won eight or more games
six of the last eight autumns, and have won
three sectional titles in that same span. In
2018, they were coming off a 9-2 season –
and doing it in a John Young Field gussied
up with brand new artificial turf, part of
an East Allen County Schools initiative
that installed all-weather football fields this
summer at all four EACS high schools.
It’s the perfect place for Linn to launch his
head-coaching career, and to continue to
nurture the culture of service, achievement
and example he learned as a student at
Manchester.
“You know, I look back at my time at
Manchester, (and) I consider it a faith-based
school,” Linn says. “I took a lot of that
and try to instill it in my players. I try to be
a good role model. You know, the values
and the work ethic I learned at Manchester
hopefully is transitioning to these young
men I’m coaching.
“That’s the main goal: Transitioning these
young men into men and giving them core
values that they’re going to use throughout
their life, not just football.”
By Benjamin Smith
Manchester | 41