High school football: Marco Island Academy names Bill Cranston coach

Marco Island Academy took its time hiring a new football coaching, waiting to find the right person and the right fit for the program.

Almost as soon as Bill Cranston walked into his interview for the job, Marco Island administrators knew they had found their guy. The school announced Monday that Cranston has been hired as the team’s new coach.

Damon Coiro resigned this offseason after his wife took a job out of state. The Manta Rays football team did not participate in spring practice this year after waiting to find a coach. Cranston is ready to hit the ground running, and he proved it in his interview, showing school officials his plans for summer workouts.

“What stood out about him is he is really prepared and really organized,” Marco Island interim athletic director Jerry Miller said. “He came into the interview with packets and documents about everything he would do, from offseason conditioning to academic standards.”

Cranston, 65, is a retired 32-year Army veteran who has coached in four states as his military career has taken him around the country. Most recently he was the junior varsity coach at Cape Coral last season and the freshman coach at Island Coast in 2014.

A native of Youngstown, Ohio, Cranston went into the Army after high school and served in Vietnam (1971-72) and Operation Iraqi Freedom (2003). He’s coached in Alaska, Nebraska and Ohio.

“I like to stay in coaching, working with young people and making young men better people,” said Cranston, who moved to Southwest Florida in 2013. “I want to mold young men into good men.”

Cranston is the fourth coach at Marco Island since the football program started in 2012. The Manta Rays still are looking for their first winning season, with their best record a 4-6 mark in 2014. They went 3-6 last year and 2-7 in 2016 under Coiro.

Marco Island is a small school (222 students) without many wins in its short history (14-40 record in six seasons). Luckily for the Manta Rays, Cranston has experience dealing with those exact problems.

In 2012, Cranston took over the Stapleton-McPherson County football program in rural central Nebraska. The program was a joint team with players from Stapleton (population 305) and McPherson County (539 people). It was the third season of the combined team, and the Cyclones went 1-17 in the first two.

With Cranston in charge, Stapleton/McPherson went 6-2 in the regular season and made the state playoffs.

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“I’ve seen how at a small community, small school the numbers can be lower,” Cranston said. “It can work if the kids really want to play football, put their mind to it and have a lot of heart. That’s what I see here (at MIA).”

Cranston will not serve as the Rays athletic director as Coiro did in his final year. The school’s AD job still is open, and officials plan to fill it this summer.

Though his goal is to improve the team for next season, Cranston said his ultimate goals always are a winning record and a playoff berth. He also wants to instill a discipline throughout the program like he learned in the military and earning a degree in organizational management.

“You can really tell he’s going to be a player-first and team-first coach,” Miller said. “He’s stressed development of young men and a sense of pride in being an MIA Ray.”