WORTHINGTON, Ohio — Jeff Hartings surveys the defense as he stands behind the center and barks out cadence under a cloudless blue sky. Fifteen years after hiking his last football to Ben Roethlisberger, Hartings is now the one taking snaps and throwing passes.
The Worthington Christian varsity football practice is nearing a conclusion and its 49-year-old head coach is serving as the scout-team quarterback, the one tasked with giving the first-unit defense a glimpse of what to expect from the next opponent.
The playoff-bound Warriors are down to 25 players due to injury and attrition, forcing many of their starters to play both ways. The program, which debuted on the varsity level in 2014, has just three part-time assistants, and only one is participating in Tuesday afternoon’s session.
And so it’s left to Hartings, who’s lost 70 pounds since 2006 retirement from the Steelers, to sling balls all over the practice field. His passes reach their desired destinations, albeit with a little wobble on each.
“For a lineman, he throws pretty good,” said sophomore quarterback Hobie Raikes, who’s also the team’s starting safety.
“Hey, I can throw arrows,” Hartings said with a smile when asked what Roethlisberger would make of his form.
Most within the Worthington Christian orbit agree the former two-time Pro Bowler, who played 11 NFL seasons, is better at spreading the wealth than distributing the football. That’s what they love about him.
Hartings is hardly the first former pro athlete to coach prep sports, but few have taken a more humble and all-encompassing approach to the task. He’s not one to regale his players and their parents with stories about opening holes for Jerome Bettis and Willie Parker in Super Bowl XL. Worthington Christian athletic director Kevin Weakley had no idea Hartings even played in the NFL when he began enrolling his eight kids — three of whom are adopted — in the private school just north of Columbus seven years ago.
A two-time Academic All-American with a marketing degree from Penn State, Hartings had profitable retirement options. But following the lead of his mentor Tunch Ilkin, he chose to volunteer much of his time to helping others — first through his ministry work in Pittsburgh and now in shepherding a fledgling prep football team toward relevance.
Hartings runs youth and flag-football programs for the school. He’s the guy who paints the lines on the practice fields at 7 a.m. on Saturday mornings after Friday night games. He fills in as a substitute teacher when needed and spends several days a week serving food in the school cafeteria.
This is the part of coaching people never see. @WCcoachhartings left the field last night close to midnight. He’s back at 7am this morning painting fields, getting ready for flag football, building the program, caring about kids! pic.twitter.com/D2IAKg5MJO
— Kevin Weakley (@CoachK_32) October 9, 2021
“Jeff has been a blessing for our school,” Weakley said. “In the Bible it says, ‘To whom much is given, much will be required.’ Jeff has taken on that mantra.”
To see him interacting with his players and his youngest son, Malachi, 9, in the Warriors’ locker room, you would never imagine this was a man once obsessed with making money and putting football ahead of family.
“He leads a life of servanthood,” said Warriors’ senior Adam Dunson, a wide receiver-defensive back. “He could have gone anywhere and done anything with his life. He chose to come here.”
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GETTY
Jeff Hartings played six seasons with the Steelers from 2001-06.
On the morning of Sept. 7, 1998, Hartings lie in his bed unable to sleep, wracked with anxiety. Several hours earlier, while playing right guard for the Lions in a nationally-televised Sunday night game, he had missed a block that led to a strip-sack of quarterback Scott Mitchell and produced a 32-yard fumble return for a Packers’ touchdown.
Offensive linemen miss blocks all the time. It’s part of the game, even for first-round draft picks who spend more than a decade in the league. But his fitful night in bed was about more than one blown assignment. It was about misaligned priorities, about an unhealthy compulsion with perfection and the status it conveys.
Hartings could feel his life unraveling, and he sensed the impact it was having on his marriage to his high-school sweetheart Rebecca. They had grown up in St. Henry, a small village in Northwest Ohio, where Hartings helped the high school football team win a state championship. He came from a family of 10 kids and he dreamed of having a household teeming with children.
Three years into his pro career, however, Hartings was miserable. Football had become all-consuming, and the Lions’ lack of success was corroding relationships with loved ones.
“I had a lot of money and I wasn’t happy,” Hartings said. “I literally thought, ‘Why wouldn’t you be happy if you had money and you could buy anything you wanted?’ That’s not how it works, though. You always want something else. We weren’t winning games and I had never experienced not winning in football.
“I didn’t respond well to losing. I was not a fun person to be around ... I’m sure I was on the path to divorce because if my wife had made me choose between football and our relationship, whether it be directly or indirectly, I would have chosen football because I absolutely loved it. That made me realize I needed help.”
His Lions’ teammate Luther Elliss had started inviting him to attend Bible studies. Hartings had grown up in the church, but admitted he didn’t pay much attention to the scriptures.
Acknowledging his fragile state, Hartings became more spiritually engaged. The lessons he learned had a calming effect and helped create more balance in his life. He went to Nicaragua on a missionary trip and moved the family’s offseason home to Utah, where he founded a nondenominational church with Elliss and others.
“I remember lying in my bed that night in (1998) and thinking, ‘I don’t want to live my life like this,’” Hartings said. “I need to live my life differently. I got on my journey ... Failure and football led me to my faith.”
In 2001, Hartings signed a six-year, $24.2 million free-agent contract with the Steelers. The deal offered him a chance to play with a winning organization and a reunion with a man who would help shape his life.
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STEELERS
Jeff Hartings, Ben Roethlisberger and Alan Faneca celebrate a touchdown in Super Bowl XL in 2006 in Detroit.
Hartings met Tunch Ilkin for the first time in the late 1990s when the former Steelers’ tackle was serving as a consultant for college and pro teams around the country. Coaches flew Ilkin into their cities for several days to teach the finer points of offensive-line play. There were even “Tunch Punch” instructional videos.
As Hartings made the transition from guard to center in Pittsburgh, he reached out to Ilkin and the two men began training together. Hartings was nervous about replacing future Hall-of-Famer Dermontti Dawson, who's part of an impressive lineage of Steelers' centers that includes Ray Mansfield, Mike Webster and Maurkice Pouncey.
Hartings evolved into a first-team All-Pro in 2004 and, alongside future Hall-of-Fame guard Alan Faneca, anchored a line that won a Super Bowl title the following year. During his six seasons in Pittsburgh, the Steelers led the league in rushing twice and finished Top-3 in total offense three times. No list of the franchise's best free-agent signings is complete without Hartings' name on it.
As for Ilkin, he assisted Hartings in another conversion, one just as meaningful as the move from guard to center.
“More than anything, he taught me how to be a Christian, a man of faith, a man who prioritized family,” Hartings said of the former Steelers’ lineman and broadcaster who died last month of pneumonia at age 63 after a year-long battle with ALS. “I wanted to model myself after Tunch. He was a little more than 10 years (older than) me, but I thought if I could live a life like Tunch Ilkin, it would be a life worth living.”
Hartings became heavily involved in the Pittsburgh-based Urban Impact Foundation, which offers sports, academics and arts programs to at-risk youths on the North Side. He did ministry work, ran baseball and basketball programs and raised money for the organization by connecting it with corporate sponsors and fellow football players for its “Play Ball for Kids” campaign.
His decade-long commitment earned him the Direct Energy Volunteer Citizen of the Year award in 2015.
“He’s a lot like Tunch,” said Steelers’ broadcaster and former offensive lineman Craig Wolfley, who was Ilkin’s best friend. “Jeff’s got a servant’s heart.”
The Hartings family first looked into adoption in the late 1990s when Jeff and Rebecca weren’t sure they would be able to have their own biological children. They were so energized by the idea of providing a stable home for others that they adopted three kids (Michael, Mianna and Malachi) even as Rebecca gave birth to five others: Sierra, Lucas, Isabella, Jullexa and Jovanna. The eight siblings range in ages from 23 to 9.
The Hartings’ generosity extends beyond their own family tree as they have helped finance the adoption of other children for friends of the family.
“The Bible says to take care of the widows and orphans and it calls on us to make a difference in people’s lives,” Hartings said. “For us, it was very simple. It was a way we could make a difference in somebody’s life. There are a lot of children in the world who need adopted.”
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TOM REED / DKPS
Former Steelers center Jeff Hartings is on the verge of leading the Worthington Christian football team to its third straight playoff appearance.
Football practices at Worthington Christian sound similar to football practices everywhere. There’s the constant clap of shoulder pads colliding, the grunts and groans involved in every tackle and the shouts of celebrations following big plays.
What you don’t hear is screams of anger from the head coach. Hartings gets frustrated with missed assignments and mental mistakes, but he teaches in the muted tones of a librarian instructing students how to use audio-visual equipment. While he raises his voice on occasion, Hartings doesn’t shout for the sake of shouting.
He remembers the win-at-all-costs soundtrack of his playing days and isn’t interested in producing a sequel. Hartings is a disciple of former NFL defensive lineman Joe Ehrmann, who founded the InSideOut Initiative, which promotes a sports culture that values the human growth and development of student-athletes.
Hartings wants to build relationships at a time when he believes social media has had a pernicious influence on interpersonal communication. He favors “transformational coaching” as opposed to “transactional coaching.”
“It’s focused on helping a boy become a man, one that will accept responsibility and lead courageously and empathize with others,” Hartings said. “That’s really my purpose in coaching. That’s what I stay focused on. That versus 100 percent focus on making that kid the best football player he can be. Because then, you get let down. You have expectations of what you want him to do and what you have taught him to do and when he doesn’t do it, you respond by getting angry. I do that sometimes for sure — I’m not perfect. But what it does is keep me grounded to coach the way I do.”
And it maybe lets his players have a sound night sleep after they miss the occasional block.
The Hartings moved here in 2015 to be closer to their extended family in Northwest Ohio. The former Steelers’ center had served as a high school offensive line coach in suburban Pittsburgh and, given his pedigree, he probably could have had his pick of coaching gigs at many of Columbus’ top prep programs. Instead, he volunteered his services at a small Christian school where he chose to enroll his children. After two years of working as an assistant, he became the Warriors’ head coach, dedicating his time to building a program from the youth levels up.
Worthington Christian boasts a 7-2 record and is on the verge of qualifying for the postseason for a third consecutive year.
“It’s not just about football and winning,” said Joshua Carrel, a junior linebacker-tight end. “I feel like I’m learning what it takes to become a man.”
Hartings spent Sunday night in Pittsburgh, watching the Steelers beat the Seahawks and seeing the fan base salute the latest group of Hall-of-Fame inductees, including his good friend Faneca.
This fall, Faneca became a high school football coach in Virginia Beach, Va., and Hartings said the two men spoke briefly about the challenges of their respective jobs.
Not one to live in the past, Hartings rarely wears his Super Bowl ring on campus unless it’s for motivational purposes. If he does name drop players from his time in the NFL, it’s usually to call attention to a certain technique they employed.
Hartings weighed about 290 pounds during his playing days. Like some former offensive linemen of recent years, Faneca included, Hartings has shed a considerable amount of weight to improve his quality of life.
“Someone handed out (football) cards from his playing days and it didn’t even look like the same person,” his quarterback Raikes said.
Nowadays, Hartings is built more like a quarterback than a center. As for his arm, well ...
“Don’t be telling people I can’t throw the ball,” Hartings said laughing. “A lot of those passes, I’m just throwing them into spaces for the defense to get a look. I’ve probably got the third-best arm on the team.”
His interview concluded, Hartings hopped into the driver’s seat of a utility cart with young Malachi at his side. Father and son rode off into the distance on a crisp Central Ohio night.
Hartings passes might flutter, but his priorities appear arrow straight.
