Published: June 14, 2008 11:20 pm         

Pawnee coach Ellis returning to Tonkawa

Pawnee’s last two football coaches have been products of two of the school’s main rivals.

Both have eventually returned to their hometowns to help said rivals.

David Ellis, who resigned as PHS’s football coach last month, will be the head baseball coach, assistant football coach and possibly assistant girl’s basketball coach at Tonkawa next season.

It is a similar story to his Black Bear predecessor, Scott Harmon, who left the school for McAlester before winding up as the head coach in his hometown of Hominy.

Ellis said a number of factors played into his decision to go home.

“My mother is three years removed from breast cancer,” Ellis said. “My sister now has lymphoma. She started (chemotherapy) treatments last month. She lives in Georgia, but potentially it will be a difficult time for my mom. I need to be close to her.

“My sister’s kids are going to come down while the treatments take place. Big picture, Tonkawa was the best opportunity for me.”

Ellis guided the Black Bears to the state quarterfinals each of the past three years and the program went 33-6 in that time.

Under Harmon, they were 36-6 in three years, winning the Class A championship with a 15-0 campaign in 2004 and taking second in 2A in 2002.

The Black Bears have won at least 10 games in five of the past six seasons and made the playoffs 20 times in 21 years.

But Ellis is leaving for a program that has its own mystique.

The Buccaneers won state titles in 1952, ’53, ’99, 2000 and ’05. It was THS that Pawnee beat for the championship in ’04.

Ellis said he’d like to be a part of helping Tonkawa win another title, but his main focus right now is on his family.

“I’ve been coaching 20 years,” he said. “You learn as you go that family takes precedence over anything else. It always should, but as you get older, that becomes more apparent. We as coaches sometimes neglect that.”

His wife, Susan, has resigned from her job as Pawnee’s elementary-school principal to become the superintendent in Billings, which is close to Tonkawa.

Their son, Colby, will be a senior in the fall. He was PHS’s starting quarterback and free safety. He completed 45-of-89 passes for 766 yards with eight touchdowns and three interceptions. He also carried the ball 103 times for 841 yards and 10 scores while adding 48 tackles, two interceptions and a fumble recovery. In the playoffs, he completed 11-of-27 passes for 93 yards and two interceptions. He ran for 200 yards and a touchdown on 48 carries while recording a team-high 32 postseason tackles.

Colby has kept in contact with some friends he made in Tonkawa when the family lived more than a decade ago.

“It will be a lot of fun playing with the kids I knew when I was younger,” Colby said. “I’ve known some of the coaches there for a long time as well.”

Pawnee and Tonkawa will play in Week 3 next year. It will be a rematch of last winter’s first-round playoff game, where PHS edged the Bucs, 8-7, in overtime.

Also in the brutal 10-team District A-7 are: Woodland, the Class A runner-up; Hominy, which reached the quarterfinals last fall; Morrison, which is moving up after winning the last three Class B titles; and Haskell, which is coming down from 2A.

     

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