Inductees

The decorated walls and shelves of his rarely seen basement home office show a career defined by success. See the aged but colorful photo of football players hoisting him on their shoulders? That’s from his first state championship at Rockhurst High School.

Not far away are framed newspaper stories, including one with a Kansas City Star headline titled, “The Rock behind Rockhurst.” Nearby rests an NFL helmet, with a Sharpie-written note that reads in part: “To Coach Sev, I will forever be grateful of the opportunity you gave me as a Hawklet.” It was signed by one of his six players who went on to the National Football League.

In other words, Tony Severino has carved out quite a career leading the Rockhurst High School football program, and it’s why the Missouri Sports Hall of Fame proudly inducted Severino with the Class of 2018.

The 2017 season marked Severino’s 48^th coaching high school football, including his 41st as a head coach. He owns an overall record of 370-106-1 (fourth-best in the state) and eight state championships. He has spent 35 of those seasons at Rockhurst, a private Catholic school where he is 326-85-1 and his teams have won seven state championships (1983, 1986, 1987, 2000, 2002, 2007, 2010).

With a 1981 state championship at Shawnee Mission Northwest in Kansas, Severino is the only coach to win state football titles in both states. Overall, his teams have qualified for the state playoffs in 35 of the past 38 years, played in 13 state championship games and 19 state semifinals. Fourteen of his players reached pro football. And the accolades go on and on.

Not that Severino takes himself too seriously.

Ask how he ever got into coaching and he jokes that, “I always credit chemistry.”

“You see, I was at school at Kansas State, and I was in Engineering and, after the first semester,” Severino said, breaking into a laugh, “I decided I was going to go into education and be a coach.”

Severino took the scenic route to Rockhurst, both figuratively and literally.

A three-sport athlete at Cathedral Latin High School in Cleveland, Ohio, he played defensive tackle at K-State in the mid-1960s, and moved back home after graduation to be an assistant football coach. But he relocated in 1971 to Kansas City, hometown of his wife, Marilyn. Eleven football seasons later, he was leading Rockhurst.

“I remember driving down State Line Road by Rockhurst and telling my wife that that’s where our sons would go to school,” Severino said, unbeknownst he would be hired after the 1982 season. “Al Davis (the athletic director) took me by Father Jack Hunthausen’s office and told him, ‘Do whatever you have to do to hire him.’”

The interview? That was it right then and there.

Severino had been an assistant football coach at Shawnee Mission West, even starting its baseball program and winning the 1977 state title, and then was head football coach at Shawnee Mission Northwest from 1977-1982, reaching three state championship games.

Before his arrival, Rockhurst had won state titles in 1971 and 1981. Yet Severino took Rockhurst to a national level, with Eric Berg the defensive coordinator for 35 years and John Morris the offensive line coach for 34 years.

Over the years, Severino’s teams have played in Texas Stadium in Dallas, to the Independence Bowl stadium in Shreveport, Louisiana to Minnesota, Chicago and Las Vegas. In 2017, the Hawklets played six teams (from four different states) that were ranked No. 1.

Along the way, Rockhurst has featured a 2,000-yard rusher (Mizzou’s Tony Temple) and 2,000-yard passer (T.J. Green). Severino also coached his sons Scott, Jeff and Brandon. But he never held Sunday coaches meetings, allowing assistants family time. And his teams won despite humble facilities, including a dilapidated weight room that he never let parents see on their first campus visits.

Overall, Severino was the 2000 USA Today National Coach of the Year and a seven-time Missouri Coach of the Year. He is a member of four other Halls of Fame, including the Missouri Football Coaches Hall of Fame, and has coached in three Army All-American Bowl Games and the Semper Fi-Marine All-American Game.

He also coached six NFLers: Tim Ryan, Kenyon Rasheed, Derek Hall, Jordan Willis, Robert Gamble and Dexter McDonald, whose signed helmet is proudly displayed in Severino’s office.

“I don’t want to be remembered for how many wins or losses,” Severino said. “But hearing from former players, the pictures they send of their kids, that’s what means the most to me.”