Boozier going back to Blackford

HARTFORD CITY — A former Patriot coach and athletics director will be walking the sidelines in Blackford County next season.

Blackford School Board hired Steve Boozier as the next Bruins football coach Tuesday, bringing him back to the job he held for eight seasons.

He will also have a teaching position leading the school’s weightlifting program.

"I'm extremely excited,” said Boozier, who led the Bruins from 2000 through 2007. “Blackford's always a place I wanted them to do well except for weeks that they were playing Jay County. And now, it just flip flops. Now I want Jay County to do well except for the week they play Blackford."

A committee worked through the interview process, talking with about 10 candidates, said BHS athletics director Garry May. He said it was Boozier’s commitment to growing the program and investing in students that stood out.

"He's a community guy,” May added. “He still lives in the community. ... It was just really, really exciting to see him come through that process.

"What really stands out is his commitment to the development and the growth of our student athletes. ... 

"Part two is, he's had proven success here. He's the last winning coach. He's the last coach to win a sectional championship.”

Boozier’s first stint with the Bruins included their last sectional championship in 2003 when they went 9-4 and scored tournament wins over Mississinewa, New Palestine and Yorktown. He was 5-5 in his final season and 45-39 overall at BHS before leaving in 2008 to become the athletics director at Wes-Del.

He later returned to coaching at Jay County, his alma mater, for three seasons before becoming the Patriots’ athletics director. He was in that role through the 2023-24 school year before retiring and then moving on to teach and coach football at Tri-County North in Ohio. (His team went 3-7.)

Before his first stint at Blackford, he coached at Northfield and Tri-County North.

"We had a great eight years there from 2000 to 2008,” said Boozier, who will trade his current 160-mile round-trip commute for 3.1 miles to BHS. (He has lived in Hartford City for 27 years.) “I’m very familiar with the area and a lot of the guys that I coached, their kids are filtering up through the system now. I'm looking forward to meeting those kids and all the others and see what we can get going."

Blackford is coming off of a difficult stretch, having posted a 4-36 record over the last four seasons. It was 2-8 last year under Randy Sehy after going winless in 2023.

The team’s last winning season came at 8-4 under Sehy — he coached the team for eight years and has also served as the track coach — as it advanced to the sectional championship game in 2018.

Boozier said he feels bringing more athletes into the program will be key to the rebuild, adding that the junior-senior high format expands those possibilities. Rather than having four-year relationships with students, they are expanded to six years.

He is hopeful to have a coaching staff in place by early April.

"We've got to make connections with kids and recruit the hallways and the lunch room and everything else," he said, adding that he planned to start doing so the day after he was hired. "I want to go out there and start meeting kids, and then throughout the spring and the course of the summer just make connections. ... We'll just start building that process slowly but surely the way we did in the past when we were there last time.”