There are high school football players whose parents weren’t yet born when Mike Gillin began his head coaching career in 1979. So when Gillin uses a superlative, he means it.
Telling his players at Indian Creek last week that he was stepping down to take the vacant head coaching position at Mooresville, Gillin says, “was probably, professionally, the hardest thing I’ve ever had to do.”
Gillin — who ranks eighth on Indiana’s all-time coaching victory list and third among active coaches — was officially approved as the new coach of the Pioneers on Tuesday night.
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He takes over a program with as many losses in the last six seasons (45) as he had in his 16 years at Indian Creek.
Though he wasn’t looking for a change of scenery, the move made sense for Gillin, who lives in Mooresville and has a daughter in the school system there.
“The more I thought about it, the more it made sense for me,” he said. “And beyond all that just making sense, too, just an opportunity to make a difference at another place.”
Gillin’s track record of making a difference is almost unmatched. He has racked up 305 wins during his career, going 93-31 at Tri-West (1979-89), 74-42 at his alma mater Decatur Central (1990-2000) and 140-45 at Indian Creek.
He’ll have his work cut out for him at Mooresville, which has not had a winning season since 2009. (Gillin, by contrast, hasn’t finished a year with a losing record since 1996.) The sledding figures to be tough in the highly competitive Mid-State Conference, where the Pioneers have won just seven league games in the last seven years.
Gillin is eager for the opportunity, though, and excited about returning to a conference in which he has many ties. A 1969 Decatur Central graduate, Gillin maintained a running rivalry with Greenwood while at Indian Creek, and during his tenure at Tri-West he coached Chris Coll, who recently was hired as the new head coach at Franklin.
“The Mid-State is kind of like going home for me,” Gillin said.
For all of the upside involved in this job change, though, Gillin had a tough time saying goodbye to Indian Creek, where he was on the sideline for more than half of the football victories the school has ever had.
He knew saying goodbye to the players last week was going to be tough, but “it was even harder once I got in front of the boys,” he said.
“We had plans for next year, of course; they’re going to be pretty good.”
Gillin leaves the Braves, however, confident that they’re in good hands and set up for continued success. He says that he’ll be checking for their scores faithfully each week, and he has no doubt that the wins will continue to outnumber the losses.
“I’m not worried about them,” Gillin said. “It was just real difficult for me to turn them loose. It was kind of like letting your kid go off to college or something — you really struggle with that.”
But after what he called an “awesome” 16-year stint in Trafalgar, Gillin is hopeful that he’s got a similar one still ahead of him in Mooresville.
“This will be my last run,” he said. “This is going to be it. Hey, I hope can coach 10, 15 more years. We’ll see about that, but I still love the game more than anything in the world, and I’m going to put 100 percent into it.”
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Mike Gillin has stepped down as the head football coach at Indian Creek. A look at how he fared in his 16 seasons with the Braves:
Year;Record
2001;10-1
2002;12-1*
2003;9-3
2004;10-1
2005;7-4
2006;8-3
2007;6-4
2008;7-4
2009;11-1
2010;12-2**
2011;8-5*
2012;9-3
2013;9-3
2014;9-1
2015;7-4
2016;6-5
Total;140-45
(* – won sectional title; ** – won regional)
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