Roger Whittaker has forged a hall of fame career coaching girls track at Gahanna Lincoln

Roger Whittaker couldn’t help but to feel a bit starstruck when he first met Ed Rarey and began serving as a sprint coach under the Gahanna Lincoln boys track and field coaching legend all the way back in the spring of 1981.

While Whittaker was just a rookie teacher embarking on the infancy of his coaching career, Rarey had already guided the Lions to the 1979 state championship and was entering the 29th season of what turned out to be a long and storied career, which began in 1953 and ended in 2013.

In 61 seasons as Gahanna’s head coach, Rarey led the Lions to two state, 14 regional, 26 district and 31 league titles.

“I was in awe of Ed Rarey and just wanted to be in his program to be a part of his greatness that I had heard about so much,” Whittaker said. “He was like God himself to most and I wanted to be a part of this machine.”

But after Whittaker molded four members of Gahanna’s fledgling girls squad into a state champion 1,600-meter relay during his rookie coaching season of 1981, he began developing ambitions of someday running his own program.

“Quickly the competitive side of me surfaced and I started to wonder if I could get to (Rarey’s) level or even surpass him someday,” said Whittaker, who is the midst of his 36th season as Gahanna’s girls track coach. “I think me taking that small group of girls that he didn’t want to deal with and making them a state (relay) champion got me to thinking that way, that maybe I’m pretty good at this coaching thing.”

Whittaker’s confidence has proven to be well-founded, as he is enjoying his own Hall of Fame career as a head coach, while leading the Lions to four state, 10 regional and 13 district championships over the first 35 seasons as their head coach.

And on Saturday, May 11, Whittaker continued to add to his legacy by guiding Gahanna to its 15th league championship under his watch, as the Lions scored 147.5 points to win the Ohio Capital Conference Ohio Division meet at Lancaster, ahead of runner-up Pickerington North (119.5).

“Roger’s not just up there with the best high school coaches in the state, Roger’s at the top of that list,” Westerville North boys and girls track coach Johnny Jackson said. “It’s him and then everybody else. Roger’s just a special guy and he has a passion for this sport that puts him on a different level.”

Master strategist, prognosticator and motivator

Whittaker is a master strategist, who spends countless hours analyzing the abilities and potential of his athletes, to make sure he places everyone in the right events to score the maximum amount of points at every important meet.

Jerrica Manley, who has served as Whittaker’s assistant coach the past 13 seasons, still marvels at his ability to squeeze the most points out of his teams every season.

“Roger’s knowledge of the sport is unbelievable,” said Manley, who was an elite sprinter at Gahanna before graduating in 2007 and competing at Kent State University. “He’s always prepared to put his athletes in the right positions to get the best out of each of them, and he prepare them to perform to the best of their potential at the biggest meets.

“Roger also knows what the other teams are bringing, even the teams that are outside of central Ohio, and he can calculate the numbers and team scores, usually within five points or less.”

Amryn Chilton, a 2023 Gahanna graduate who is a key member of Kent State’s sprinting unit this spring, said Whittaker’s ability to predict his team’s scores ahead of time continues to be inspirational for his athletes.

“Just knowing that we would be in a good position to win would motivate me more and more to do what I had to do to get points for my team, helping me develop a good mindset before the meet,” Chilton said. “He would have meetings before every postseason meet, telling us and writing out every event to show what the team score would be in the end, and what we would have to do to make it happen.

“In the end, he would always be right about the scores. We just had to trust him and the process until the end.”

Building a dynasty

Whittaker has built his program into a juggernaut in recent years, with the Lions winning 12 consecutive OCC championships, 11 consecutive district titles and eight consecutive regional championships.

Under the veteran coach’s watch, Gahanna also has emerged as the most powerful team at the state meet over the past decade, capturing state titles in 2015, 2018, 2022 and 2023, while finishing second in 2016, 2017 and 2021, and third in 2014 and 2019. There was no track state championship in 2020. 

The top-seeded Lions will attempt to keep their string of postseason championships going when they compete in the Division I, district 2 meet, which began on May 14 and will conclude Saturday, May 18 at Hilliard Darby.

Whittaker said he modeled the way he runs his program off of the blueprint that Cleveland Collinwood coach Lou Slapnik created, while leading Collinwood to nine state titles in his 17 years there.

“Coach Slapnik was my idol, because his girls loved running for him so much (that) they would run through a wall for him,” Whittaker said. “I wanted to fashion our program to be more like Collinwood, so I would go to the same meets that he was at and learn from him. We kept closing the gap every year, and finally we caught up to Collinwood and beat them.

“When we finally won our first state championship, it was a dream come true, but ever since then, my dreams just keep getting bigger and bigger.”

Hall of Fame career

As Whittaker has continued to bring prestigious championship trophies and medals back to Gahanna, he has received a large number of accolades and awards as well.

Most notably, Whittaker was named the national Coach of the Year for 2017-18, and the Ohio Coach of the Year for both 2021-22 and 22-23 by the National Federation of State High School Associations Coaches Association.

Whittaker also was inducted into the Gahanna Lincoln Athletic Hall of Fame in 2017, and he was inducted into the Ohio Association of Track and Cross Country Coaches (OATCCC) Hall of Fame this past January.

“Going into the (OATCCC) Hall of Fame is something I treasure, and it’s almost a bigger deal to me than being national coach of the year, because it came from my peers who know firsthand the love I have for this sport,” Whittaker said. “I appreciate all of these awards but if my name never came up, I’d still be pleased to see our girls acknowledged for what they’ve done here over the years.

“The greatest thing I’ve ever been a part of is putting this team on the map, so that so many of our girls could be recognized as champions. They’ve done a lot of great things, and I just do my best to give them platform where they can shine.”

Humble beginnings

While growing up in a low-income neighborhood on the near-East side of Columbus, Whittaker never could have envisioned that his life would unfold in this fashion.

Whittaker and his brothers, John and Craig, and sisters, Donna, Danielle and Patty, were raised by John and Betty Whittaker, who were married for 56 years.

John was an all-star athlete in both baseball and basketball at Columbus Central back in the 1940s, who would go on to serve a sergeant in the United States Army during the Korean War. Betty worked as a librarian for the Columbus Public libraries in the 1960s and 70s.

“We lived in a rough neighborhood, but my parents made it feel like we were rich,” Roger said. “We had the best childhood, even though you had to keep your head on a swivel and be ready to run at any given moment.”

Roger was an accomplished trumpet player while attending Monroe Junior High, who also played the French horn, string bass, tuba and baritone horn. But Whittaker quit playing music in favor of focusing on playing sports at Linden-McKinley High School.

In that era, Linden was full of talented athletes, including 1977 graduate Mike Holloway and 1978 graduate James “Buster” Douglas. As a senior, Holloway was part of Linden’s 440 shuttle hurdle relay that won a state title while setting a new state record.

Holloway has been the head coach of the University of Florida’s men’s track team since 2002, and has been the women’s track squad’s head coach since 2007, winning a total of 13 NCAA championships (11 men’s, two women’s titles). Holloway also served as the head coach of the U.S. Olympic Track and Field team in the Olympic Games held in Tokyo in the summer of 2021, guiding his athletes to a total of 19 Olympic medals.

Douglas helped Linden’s basketball team capture a Class AAA state title in 1977, before earning a 38-6-1 record as a professional boxer. On Feb. 11, 1990 in Tokyo, Japan, Douglas knocked out previously-undefeated Mike Tyson to become the undisputed heavyweight champion of the world.

Even Archie Griffin played for the Linden Eagles recreational league football program, before going to win two Heisman Trophies as Ohio State’s running back, and playing seven years for the Cincinnati Bengals in the NFL.

“I lived miles away from Linden-McKinley, so I thumbed a ride to school every day, because I didn’t have the money to ride the bus,” Whittaker said. “There were so many great athletes around Linden in those days. We had great football, basketball and baseball players, and Mike Holloway was a great track athlete, who is now a great coach. Mike has recruited some of my athletes, including (five-time Division I state hurdling champion) Camden Bentley, who ended up going to Kentucky.

“I can remember Buster Douglas used to tag along with his older brother, wanting to play sports with us, and we were (jokingly) like ‘get out of here kid.’ Little did any of us know that he was going to be the heavyweight champion of the world.”

“Supreme competitor”

At Linden, Whittaker played running back for the football team and center field for the baseball squad for three years, in addition to one season of junior varsity basketball and one season of indoor track.

Blessed with an abundance of speed, Whittaker stole 44 bases on 44 attempts and was first-team all-City League during his senior baseball season in the spring of 1975.

Whittaker robbed countless opponents of hits by making acrobatics catches in center field and when he laid down bunts along the first- or third-base line, he was nearly impossible to throw out.

“Roger is one of those rare people who was both quick and fast, while most athletes are just one or the other,” said Sam Hopkins, who was Linden’s baseball coach from 1970-76. “Every time Roger ran the ball in football, he had no fear and he would hit the line of scrimmage running 300 miles per hour.

“For three years, Roger was the heart of our baseball team. Roger’s a supreme competitor and so intelligent. He got so good at stealing bases that I quit giving him a signal, because I trusted him. I would see him smiling as he stole second and third base, because he knew he had it, even before the pitcher started his motion.”

Whittaker then played two seasons of baseball at Bowling Green University before giving up baseball to become one of the top sprinters on Bowling Green’s track squad for two seasons.