After lifetime in football, Shaffer takes over at Rochester

‘This is something I can envision myself doing for 15 to 20 years’

BY VAL TSOUTSOURIS

Sports Editor, RTC

Isaac Shaffer was born into a football life and has continued to live it.

It goes back to his days as a ballboy at Lewis Cass games to his days as a high school player to his days as a quarterback, running back and defensive back for the Kings to playing at the University of Indianapolis to jumping right into coaching.

And after five years as an assistant coach at Rochester, he was hired as the new Zebra head coach in January, replacing his father Ron.

A coach is always learning, and Shaffer said he is no different. When a coach watches film, he needs to know what to look for. Watching film alone takes up more than 10 hours per week.

A head coach needs to make sure that his players are progressing in both the weight room and the classroom.

But if part of a coach’s job is to establish a culture, then Isaac Shaffer has already been part of that. Rochester went 39-13 over the last five years during his time as an assistant.

They have lost three Three Rivers Conference games in the last four years.

“This is my first teaching assignment that I’ve ever had,” Isaac said. “Got a job here right out of college – so Dad’s first year here as the head coach. … When he got the head coaching job here, I came in as an assistant, and I really liked the kids. It reminded me a lot of graduating from Lewis Cass – a smaller school, good football school, a lot of talent, hard-nosed kids.”

Isaac said that his father confided in him early last season that it would be his final season and that he would be “molding” him with extra responsibilities to see if he would be well-suited for the job.

Rochester is the only place where he has taught and coached since graduating from the University of Indianapolis in 2021.

“We’d kinda talked over those years: ‘Is this something you want to pursue? Do you want to be a head coach?’” Isaac said. “And it just felt like the right fit. And so I’ve really enjoyed my time here.”

Isaac Shaffer is Rochester’s sixth head coach since Mark Miller stepped down following the 2011-12 school year. Isaac Shaffer, a 2016 Lewis Cass grad, sees this job as potentially a longer-term fit than it was for his father.

“There’s not a lot of coaches these days that are doing the 15-to-20-years at the same school, and this is something I can envision myself doing for 15 to 20 years,” Isaac said. “I like creating that – I don’t want to say dynasty – but that legacy of having a long career at one school rather than you get these coaches that are three or four years and looking for the next big thing. That’s not really who I am. I don’t like change. Change is not something I like, so if I can be here for 15, 20 years, I’d like to do that.”

Isaac started out working with quarterbacks and defensive backs when he joined the staff in 2021. He remembers a 12-7 win over Knox at Barnhart Field – “a grind-it-out game,” Isaac said – that was not decided until late in the fourth quarter as a confidence-builder. The guys beat a good team, and they were “hungry for more,” Isaac said.

Rochester had a winless season in 2020 when Isaac was still a senior in college and Ron was an assistant coach. Rochester won five games in 2021 in his first year on staff. They jumped up to 10 wins in 2022 before losing to Lafayette Central Catholic in the sectional final. The 2023 team went 7-3. A loss at Peru denied them the TRC title, and a loss to Lafayette Central Catholic in the sectional semifinals ended their season.

He eventually moved up from position coach to defensive coordinator.

The 2024 team cut their defensive average from 18.9 to 12.8 points per game, and the team went 8-3. The 2025 team allowed 7.5 points per game and ranked second in the state in defensive scoring average and finished 9-2, losing only to Tippecanoe Valley and to Eastbrook in the sectional semifinals.

A life in football

Isaac’s earliest football memories start when his father was an assistant coach at Maconaquah. While his father left Maconaquah to take a job on the Lewis Cass staff when he was a second-grader, Isaac continued to attend Maconaquah schools before moving to Lewis Cass during the summer between his sixth and seventh grade years.

“I’ve been going to a Friday night football game since I can remember,” Isaac said. “So about the time I can remember was around probably the ‘02-’03 season. Dad was at Maconaquah at the time. I can’t remember what my mom did on the sidelines, but I think she did data tracking of some sort, and I was just right next to her right there watching the game and just loved it. … I was 3 or 4 running around on the sidelines, and that’s all I can remember. Once the fall hit, it was all football.

“Dad coached JV. I’d go with him to JV games. Freshman games. We’d watch the junior high play. Wednesday nights was about the one night where we didn’t watch football of some sort because you had Thursday night football with the NFL, Saturday college football and Sunday NFL, so I was just surrounded by it all the time just because of Dad’s love for the game, and I developed a love for the game myself. And just was chomping at the bit once I got to third grade to where I could play the game and be a part of the youth program.”

Isaac was exposed to winning right away. The 2005 season was Ron Shaffer’s first as a Lewis Cass assistant coach and Isaac’s first as a Lewis Cass ballboy. Lewis Cass went 13-1 that season, losing only to Jimtown in the semistate.

The 2006 team went 10-1, losing only to Heritage in the sectional semifinals. The 2007 team upset undefeated Rochester in the sectional quarterfinals and went on to semistate before losing to Fort Wayne Luers. The 2008 team is perhaps the greatest ever team at Lewis Cass as they made their only run to the Class 2A state championship game before losing to Heritage Christian 17-14.

Ron Shaffer was working for coach Scott Mannering. Mannering later was Isaac’s high school coach.

“Just during that time, I met a lot of kids my age, and it was different there than at Maconaquah,” Isaac said. “I enjoyed playing football at Maconaquah. I had a lot of good friends, and we had some good teams over the years. Once I moved in seventh grade, there was just something different about it. I really enjoyed it. I’m more than thankful for the opportunity to play for Scott Mannering. You want to talk about probably one of the greatest coaches throughout Indiana football. His last year at Cass as the head coach was my senior year. And so, just an incredible experience in my time playing for him.”

Scott Mannering won eight sectionals and four regionals during his time at Lewis Cass before leaving to take the Twin Lakes job in 2017.

Mannering installed a wing-T offense at Lewis Cass, which Ron Shaffer brought with him to Rochester and which Isaac will continue in 2026.

Isaac was asked how much the Rochester football culture in 2026 will borrow from the culture he learned from Mannering.

“It is very identical,” Isaac said. “From our warmups to the whole game being played, it is very similar in everything that we do and probably the same in our preparation from Monday to Friday. There’s not much difference in it. How we do our awards is the same. It’s almost identical programs.”

Isaac was a quarterback from his seventh through 10th grade years. He suffered a head injury in a JV game against Winamac his sophomore year and was knocked out cold. He passed a concussion test and was told he could practice but was told he needed to sit out a week from games.

While in practice, he was practicing with the varsity and beat out a senior for the starting cornerback job and played varsity for the rest of the season. Mannering believed in rotating fresh players in the game, and Isaac saw varsity snaps.

He played halfback on offense and safety on defense as a junior and senior. Isaac said that playing different positions helped expand his knowledge of the game.

“The thing that Dad’s always told me with football is you have to be a sponge when it comes to the game,” Isaac said. “And so knowing and playing all of those different skill positions, the knowledge I was able to obtain that you know as a kid you never think about. You’re just taking it in because you want to get on the field. But then to use that as a coach was very helpful for me.

“So now I’m sitting down with Dad at least once a week, and I’m going through alignments because I never played offensive line. I have no idea. Luckily, my brother went through the Cass system as an offensive lineman. He’s a great offensive line coach, but as a head coach, you still have to have that knowledge in knowing all that different stuff. That’s something I’m trying to absorb now because it’s something I’d never done as a player.”

Isaac also wrestled for two years, swam for a year and ran track for four years at Lewis Cass, where he specialized in the 800 meters.

Playing for the Greyhounds

After running for 525 yards and six touchdowns and adding 15.3 yards per catch on eight catches in his senior year at Lewis Cass in the fall of 2015, Isaac went to the University of Indianapolis for his college career.

“It was a great experience,” Isaac said. “Just eye-opening, coming from your senior year at Lewis Cass in Walton, Ind. You walk out of there as the best player in your class, and you’re kinda walking into UIndy like ‘I’m the man,’ and you aren’t the man. Everybody walking in there is the man of their school, and I’m in a locker next to a guy from (Fort Wayne) Snider who if he had the grades would have gone to a Big Ten school. It’s like what am I doing sitting next to you.”

Shaffer realized how much work was involved to get on the field at UIndy. Morning runs at 5 a.m. were not uncommon.

“So my freshman class, we had 80 freshmen coming into UIndy,” Isaac said. “That first year, they redshirted all of us. They’re trying to figure out who’s going to break. Who wants to be here? Who’s going to get through the tough times? It was a great experience. So I redshirted and was able to go and play there for five years.”

UIndy won two conference championships during his playing days. They were ranked as high as No. 3 in the NCAA Division II polls during his sophomore year.

Due to COVID, he gained a sixth year of eligibility and could have come back for one more season in 2021. He decided against it.

Even though he was not going to play in the fall, he came out for spring football anyway. An assistant coach who knew that Isaac was considering a career as a coach convinced him to come out and take some of the younger guys under his wing.

“I told them I was done with my degree,” Isaac said. “I was ready to go teach and coach, but I still was going to be in school for that spring season, and that was their opportunity to not use eligibility on younger guys and see who could play. And so if you were not coming back on the team, they were not going to give you a starting spot. Which I understand, you know. … I could sit there and pound my first against a brick wall and say it’s not fair, but nothing was going to change.”

Getting into coaching

Isaac said that he knew he wanted to get into teaching towards the end of his high school career. He said he thought about becoming a grad assistant and considered college coaching, but after talking with some other grad assistants, he decided that high school was where he wanted to coach.

He noticed the winless record in 2020, but Ron Shaffer, who had just come to Rochester and who was an assistant on Sean Kelly’s staff that year, told Isaac that there was some talent. He needed to watch some of the game film.

“He saw that freshman class,” Isaac said. “You had (Alex) Deming. You had (Colton) Ferverda. You had even a class above them the Swangos (twins Aaron and Eli). You had a good mix of kids that you could build something. We sat down, and he kinda just sent me his login information to Hudl for Rochester and said, ‘Now don’t watch the score or anything. Just watch some of these kids, and watch what they’re doing. They’re young right now, but we have a chance to build some football skills, and we could have a pretty good run here.’ I’m not sure we thought that we could get to where we did as quickly.”

As more wins followed, Isaac noticed that a coach’s development is never over.

For example, when he first joined the coaching staff, they ran trap a lot more because fullback Alex Deming excelled at that play. Last year, they ran jet and rocket sweeps more to take advantage of speedy halfbacks like Trenton Meadows, Alex Chapman and Grant Holloway.

“We go to clinics all the time, and you hear people and how they’ve tweaked just a few things, and just those slight tweaks maybe give you the advantage,” Isaac said. “It’s things you kinda put in your toolbelt. You might go and watch somebody. Well, they might be running the wing-T, but they’re a 5A school. The speed is a little different. The size is a little different. 

“And so you take things that you put in your toolbelt, and then you assess, OK, what do we have as players? What are we good at that we can use with the personnel that we have. It’s kinda changed throughout the years just here at Rochester.”

Isaac has also coached sixth grade girls basketball, eighth grade boys basketball and middle school track since coming here. He also was an assistant coach on Joel Burrus’ girls basketball staff. Last week, Burrus spoke to the football team at the Manchester University team camp.

“Probably the best experience I’ve had was getting the opportunity to coach under coach Burrus,” Isaac said. “I had always coached under my dad, so all I knew was the way he saw things as a head coach. Not a bad thing. He’s a fantastic head coach. But it allowed me to coach under a different head coach and a different perspective on things. And so while it’s not the same sport as football, I learned a lot from coach Burrus, just in his preparation of the game.”

Loss to Eastbrook ‘hurt bad’

Rochester came into last year’s sectional semifinal on an eight-game winning streak. The defense had recorded five shutouts. They were coming off a 44-0 win over Elwood in which they allowed just 16 total yards. They were ranked No. 8 in the state.

They then lost to No. 5 Eastbrook 42-14. Eastbrook scored more points in that game than the Zebras had allowed in their previous 10 games combined (41).

The game was played Oct. 31. Isaac said he did not watch the game film until winter break.

He noted that a fumbled hook-and-ladder play and an incomplete pass on a fake punt were crucial.

“It felt like it was eye-opening for us from a weight room standpoint,” Isaac said. “I felt like Eastbrook was stronger than us. I don’t necessarily think they were more talented than us, but they were definitely stronger and just executed better than we did that night. In this game, if you want to be on the highest pedestal, you’ve got to execute for six weeks straight.

“I felt like that was not our night, and it hurt bad.”

New coaching staff

Rochester will host Winamac in a scrimmage on Aug. 14. The season opener is also at home against Southwood Aug. 21. That will also mark Larry “Bud” Wright’s first game as Southwood coach. Wright, 85, is the winningest coach in IHSAA history and won nine state titles during his tenure at Sheridan. Wright is 57 years Isaac’s senior. He had been in coaching 30 years when Isaac was born.

“So I’m really excited for the opportunity,” Isaac said. “Not a lot of people get to say your first game as a head coach is against the all-time winningest coach in Indiana history. I’ll probably be a little star-struck throughout the warm-ups, but make no mistake, the goal is for him to not add to that win total that first week.”

Isaac is married to Lacey, an assistant girls soccer coach at Maconaquah. They are parents of Sophie, 8 months. The couple is expecting their second child in January.

As for Ron Shaffer, he accepted the Plymouth football coaching and dean of students jobs in January but resigned those positions in May. Isaac Shaffer said he will have no role on his coaching staff but will be listed as a volunteer. Isaac said his father is “ready to take on the grandfather role.”

Isaac’s sister is also expecting her first child.