Whiteland coach Darrin Fisher, left, gives a play to quarterback Kevin Denham during the Class 5A state title game against Valparaiso.
Daily Journal file photo
There aren’t an abundance of Indiana Football Hall of Fame inductees who had a career in which they coached two schools in the same county.
Roger Dodson is a rarity.
Dodson, whose three-school stop included presiding over teams at Indian Creek (1983-85) and Franklin (1986-95), is one of four men with strong Johnson County ties who’ll be inducted as part of the class of 2023.
Others to be honored are Whiteland coach Darrin Fisher, former Martinsville coach and current Center Grove assistant Joe Siderewicz and former Greenwood All-State linebacker A.J. Edds.
Now 68, Dodson, whose career spans 45 years of autumn Friday nights as either a head coach or an assistant, had never thought of the Hall of Fame as a potential landing spot.
“This honor is a total surprise, and totally unexpected to me,” said Dodson, a 1972 Bremen graduate who moved to Franklin in the late 1980s and has lived there ever since. “It’s very humbling. I don’t know if this was ever a goal of mine.”
Dodson began his career as a Roncalli assistant in 1977, and actually returned to the Royals’ sideline as an assistant for the 2022 season.
In between, he posted a 19-11 record at Indian Creek, was 47-46 at Franklin and guided the gridiron fortunes at Greenfield-Central for a decade (2006-15). Before landing the G-C gig, Dodson also spent time as an assistant coach at Lawrence North.
Mix in 10 years of playing organized football, and Dodson has devoted 55 years to the sport.
“Maybe if I was a better golfer, I wouldn’t still be doing this,” Dodson said, laughing.
Fisher, fresh off of leading Whiteland to the Class 5A state championship game, has over 30 years of coaching experience in Indiana and Iowa. He took over the Warriors in 2005 and now has a 130-72 record, seven Mid-State Conference championships and five sectional titles to show for it.
He was selected to coach in the 2009 and 2016 Indiana North-South All-Star games.
“I think it’s an example of being in the right place at the right time with the right people,” said Fisher, 56. “It takes a family commitment to be good, and that’s my family, my assistant coaches and all the players over the years and their families.
“One of the things we’ve always talked about is don’t ever be bored doing things right.”
Siderewicz served as an assistant at Martinsville for his father, Bill, for 15 seasons before becoming the Artesians’ head coach in 2001. He held that position for six years before becoming a Center Grove assistant coach, a role in which he’s helped the Trojans secure five state championships in the past 15 seasons.
Bill Siderewicz, who retired with a career record of 222-68, was inducted into the Hall of Fame in 1993. He passed away on March 7 at the age of 87.
The 35-year old Edds is a 2006 Greenwood graduate who graduated with 12 varsity letters, his other sports being basketball and track and field. He was a four-time All-Mid-State Conference football player as a linebacker and tight end, earning All-State recognition his junior and senior seasons.
Edds went on to have an outstanding career as an outside linebacker at the University of Iowa and later played five seasons in the National Football League.
His journey began with the Woodmen, who had accrued a combined 12-29 record in the four seasons prior to Edds’ arrival (1998-2001).
Edds and his classmates flipped the script entirely, going 38-10 from 2002-05, their Greenwood grid career coming to a close with a 17-7 loss at Roncalli in a Class 4A regional.
“This is an extremely humbling honor,” said Edds, who lives in Chicago and is senior director of football operations for the Big Ten Conference. “It speaks to the quality of teams that I was on, but also the coaches and the teachers at Greenwood.
“People I was around every day. The enjoyment of daily evolution and daily improvement is such a neat thing to be part of.”
