Coach Dave Ray
A Labor of Love
and Commitment

Growing up in Cuyahoga Falls, Ohio, Novi’s Dave Ray starred in football and baseball in high school. And as a quarterback and cornerback on the gridiron, he made a lot of observations about football and life.  At an early age he began to accumulate the wisdom he has now passed along to young Novi athletes for the last 15 years.

He grew appreciative of the offensive and defensive lineman, believing they were the core of the team. And, in football as in life, it always comes down to executing the basics and the fundamentals on a daily basis if you want to be successful. At it’s roots, football is blocking and tackling, and actually so is life. “My job on the field is to teach kids how to compete, how to work hard, and to learn toughness.”

This is million dollar advice, and Dave Ray has been dispensing it for a decade and a half, for no charge whatsoever.

“You don’t go into coaching for money,” he reiterated, “it’s a labor of love.” And his selfless time commitment and contribution to the community still resonates, and it will for years to come.

After high school, Dave Ray matriculated at Ohio State University, earning his B.A. in Political Science and Anthropology. From there, he headed off to Ohio Northern University where he earned his law degree and soon he found himself employed in the world of higher education at New Mexico Highlands from 1980 - 1983.

It was during that time period he entered his career calling, and he joined the FBI while in Albuquerque. The first two years of his tenure with the Bureau were spent in Seattle, Washington but he arrived in Novi, Michigan in 1985 where he has been ever since, with his wife Barbara and two sons Jake and Doug, both outstanding student-athletes in their own right.

Coaching is teaching, and in 1991 Coach Ray took his teaching talents to the baseball diamond and began helping kids in house league baseball, and it grew quickly from there. In 1993, he was an assistant coach for the Novi-Northville Colts football organization, and in 1994 he became the Head Coach. Although the establishment had been up and running, the season before the Colts were 1-8, but the year that Dave Ray took over the team went 9-1 and made it all the way to the Super Bowl.

Ray is humble about this and is quick to deflect all credit to his assistants Chuck Cislo, Carl Chandler and Steve Bogdalek. “I was surrounded by some great people, “ Ray suggested, but be that as it may, the tone was set and the die was cast.

A team always takes on the personality of their field general, and that was Coach Dave Ray.

“We took pride in being a tough, physical, never-say-die group,” Ray stated, “We wanted to make sure that at the end of every game our opponent would acknowledge that they had been in a real battle, and that nobody hit them like Novi did”

Ray taught, lived, and showed by example that “strong beliefs and high expectations would produce significant action that would lead to positive results.”

Quoting former OSU All-American and Detroit Lion Chris Spielman, Ray too believed that you approached your craft with the ‘intent to get better, and a purpose-to have success that would lead to victory.’

His teachings would bear even more fruit in the Fall of 2002, when many of his former young Colt players were members of the Novi High School Varsity Football Team, and they had started the season with a 1-2 record. The captains held a closed door, players-only meeting to discuss the challenges that were ahead. The result? Their leadership, dedication and toughness… all traits learned from Coach Ray, resulted in one of the more storybook seasons in the history of Novi High School Football.

The team went on to defeat #1 ranked Milford not once, but twice, and also bested heavily favored Lake Orion on the road, holding their highly powered offense to just 13 points while capturing Novi’s first District Championship in 15 years. At the end of the game, many Lake Orion Dragon players admitted that no defense had hit them like that all year. Credit Coach Ray - the tone had been set and the die had been cast years before.

In 1996 Coach Ray, in part, used his football mentality on the baseball field and guided the U12 Novi Heat to the AABC World Series in Puerto Rico. To do so they had to maneuver quite a gauntlet. After winning their District Tournament, they headed to Minnesota for Regional Championship action, they had to play 4 games in 24 hours to earn a berth in the World Series.

When you consider they were part of a pool that included 2,000 teams that began tournament play nationwide and the process of elimination would only allow the Final 8 to make it to Puerto Rico, you realize this was a phenomenal achievement.

Of course once again, Coach Ray was quick to deflect credit, insisting that “this group of special athletes and their dedicated, committed families, were the things that enabled this accomplishment.”

These days, Coach Ray finds himself back on the baseball diamond, coaching the U16 Novi Heat even though his sons are grown and he doesn’t have any kids of his own playing on the team. Giving his time selflessly, dispensing knowledge, wisdom and life lessons to the youth of the community, it’s like déjà vu all over again, as Yogi Berra would say.

But then again Coach Ray is quick to admit, “the times I spend on the ball diamond and on the football field… they are the happiest times of my life.”

A labor of love and commitment and certainly, lasting success. This is the legacy of Coach Dave Ray, and the legacy continues.