This document provides background on Garry Fisher, the defensive coordinator for the Shenandoah University football team. It discusses his playing career at Bowling Green under Urban Meyer, his subsequent coaching positions, and how his childhood experiences prepared him for a career in coaching. The Hornets' players respond well to Fisher due to his personality, football knowledge, and the team's defensive success under his leadership.

1. Hornets’ Fisher has a passion for the game
By Robert Niedzwiecki
The Winchester Star
WINCHESTER — The Shenandoah University football team had a new defensive
coordinator, but who was he really?
The players knew a few things about Garry Fisher when he was hired in January — they
knew he was young (27 years old), they knew he played for Division I school Bowling
Green, they knew he played for and was a graduate assistant under current University of
Florida coach Urban Meyer when Meyer was at Bowling Green and Utah.
But during winter workouts, Fisher didn’t say
much.
When he did decide to say something, the
players knew they had something big in their
midst.
“There are some people when they speak,
nobody listens,” said Meyer in a recent
conference call. “When Garry speaks, everybody
stops and listens.”
The Hornets’ players haven’t stopped listening
and learning from the California native who they
can confide in off the field even after getting
chewed out by him on the field.
One reason they respond to him is because of the
results — Shenandoah is second in the USA
South in total defense (297.8 yards per game),
fourth in scoring defense (23.2 points per game)
and third in turnovers forced (14).
Another reason they respond is his personality
— in one meeting with some players last week,
Fisher and his players joked about something that happened on the field briefly, but the
players immediately turned serious when Fisher did.
Shenandoah University defensive
coordinator Garry Fisher keeps a
watchful eye on a recent practice.
(Photo by Scott Mason)

2. “He’s definitely a good coach as far as being able to relate to players,” Shenandoah
senior linebacker Mike Guerra said. “He talks to us about a lot of stuff, and we feel we
can go to him and talk about things.
“At the same time, he commands respect, and I think everyone on our defense knows
that.”
The Hornets are listening to the four-year starting linebacker at Bowling Green because
he has a lot of constructive things to say.
Shenandoah head coach Paul Barnes perhaps summed it up best after answering a few
questions about Fisher before a reporter went in to interview him:
“You might not have enough notebooks.”
Learning the lifestyle early
When Fisher was hired to coach at Shenandoah, it became his fourth stop in four years
(he was the graduate assistant at Bowling Green in 2003 after finishing his playing career
there in 2001 and being a program assistant in 2002; he was a graduate assistant at Utah
in 2004; and he coached linebackers and special teams at Division III Heidelberg (Ohio)
College in 2005).
Fisher didn’t move with that type of frequency as a child, but it was close.
His parents separated when he was 7, prompting his mother to go to Birmingham, Ala.,
where she was from, and prompting his father to go to Columbus, Ohio, where he was
from.
Fisher, along with his two brothers and two sisters (Fisher is the second oldest) went to
live with his mother in Alabama.
“Because of a change in the family situation,” Fisher said, he and his older sister went to
live with their father in Columbus when he was in eighth grade.
In a way, that change wound up bringing the family the closest it had been since they all
lived together in California.
“My mother had custody,” Fisher said. “Because of that, my father couldn’t legally put
me in school.
“Six months later, she came (to Columbus) to put me in school, and she just stayed.”
Though all that moving, not to mention the various changes in family living
arrangements, might have been difficult for some people to handle emotionally, Fisher
just accepted those changes as things his family had to do.

3. He also believes the last four years of his life — mainly, the time he spent in Utah —
might have been harder if not for his childhood moving experiences.
“At that time, it was just a way of life,” Fisher
said. “Now it seems like it’s prepared me for
what I’m doing. It’s helped me in coaching,
where you have to adapt and meet new people.”
What helped Fisher adapt to Columbus the most
was, naturally, football.
“I was very, very good at football, and not very
good at other things,” Fisher said. “That whole
thing with being good — I wanted to play
football and I didn’t want to do nothing else.
“Football’s always been an adrenaline rush for
me. It’s something that’s always excited me.”
People noticed. Fisher was a two-time captain
and two-time all-Ohio linebacker at Briggs High
School, where he also played running back. His
senior football season was 1996 and he
graduated in 1997.
Fisher received scholarship offers from all of the
Mid-American schools and would have the
opportunity to walk on at the school where
another linebacker from the Ohio high school
class of 1997 was going.
Andy Katzenmoyer, a freshman sensation at
Ohio State in 1997 who briefly played in the National Football League, was a fellow all-
Ohio linebacker that year, and it pleased Fisher to see his name in the same company as
his.
“Here I am, 5 (feet) 10, 190 (pounds) and he’s 6-5, 230,” Fisher said.
But Fisher elected to opt for a scholarship, and he took the one offered by Bowling Green
mainly because of the man who recruited him, Tim Walton. Walton is now the defensive
backs coach at the University of Miami.
Fisher didn’t think much about it at the time, but Walton helped crystallize Fisher’s
future in more ways than one.
Shenandoah University defensive
coordinator Garry Fisher (above,
center) played for Division I
Bowling Green and was a graduate
assistant under current University
of Florida coach Urban Meyer
when Meyer was at Bowling Green
and Utah.
(Photos by Scott Mason)

4. “It’s funny now, but when he recruited me, he talked about going on and having a
successful career as a player and possibly getting into coaching,” Fisher said. “He told me
I’d have an opportunity to do that.”
Bowling strikes
To say Fisher enjoyed his time at Ohio’s Bowling Green University is an understatement.
“It was awesome,” said Fisher before the question about his time there was even done
coming out. “That’s what you want to get out of the college experience.
“You tell kids all the time, ‘This really could be the best time of your life if it’s done the
right way.’ I was surrounded by a number of good people, I was surrounded by a number
of good coaches, and my teammates were awesome.”
Fisher made sure his playing experience was everything it could be. After redshirting his
freshman year of 1997, Fisher went on to start each of the next four years.
Fisher said having to fight to keep his job every year made his work ethic stronger.
Having Meyer come aboard to coach the Falcons prior to his senior year did much more
than that — it gave him the year of his life, and a future that should be bright no matter
where it takes him.
After going 5-6, 5-6, and 2-9 in his first three years playing all three linebacker positions,
Fisher’s senior year, which he spent entirely at strongside linebacker, resulted in an 8-3
campaign.
Fisher attributes much of that success to Meyer.
“He brought us together as a team,” Fisher said. “He pushed us to perform. He made the
experience what it should be. He created excitement throughout the campus to get more
people to games.
“My senior year, one of his biggest sayings was, ‘Why not us, why not now?
‘Why can’t we go out and be that team that wins games? Why can’t we be that team that
has the exciting crowd? Why can’t we be that team that makes 25,000 people come out to
the game?’
“He challenged us in a number of ways, and I think we answered the challenge. My
senior year was really the best year of my life.”
Fisher capped it by earning the team’s Carlos Jackson award — which recognizes an
athlete’s ability to inspire.

5. For Fisher, who made 46 tackles as part of a linebacking crew that included Khary
Campbell, the special teams captain for the Washington Redskins, the seeds for a special
season were planted long before the first game.
During training camp, Meyer stayed in the same complex as his players, and Fisher took
advantage of having a dorm room right next to Meyer.
“Together we sat up at night and we talked,” said Fisher, a sociology major at Bowling
Green. “We talked about coaching and the things that great coaches had.
“As we talked about it, I could see those qualities in myself, but he used to highlight them
for me and tell me I could be a great one if I wanted to be.
“Tim Walton introduced (the prospect of becoming a coach) when I was a freshman, but
then I didn’t have a clue what I wanted to do. Coach Meyer finalized it for me.”
Meyer made Fisher a program assistant for the 2002 season, putting him in charge of the
team’s study table program.
In that program, Fisher’s job was to make sure the 22 freshmen and eight players who
were at academic risk were taking the right approach to their schoolwork. Fisher had
three tutors to make sure the players understood the material, but Fisher took care of
everything else.
“The biggest thing I did was time management for them and help them understand the
mistakes they could possibly make if they didn’t take their academics seriously,” Fisher
said. “I installed discipline, I installed work ethic, made sure they went to class, did
weekly updates as far as what their grades were doing. I was making sure they stayed on
the right path as freshmen.”
It worked. Fisher’s efforts helped Bowling Green achieve the highest grade point average
the football program has ever calculated for a semester, and the squad ranked second to
Miami of Ohio in the MAC’s overall football grade rankings.
The Falcons went 9-3 in 2002, and with Fisher serving as a graduate assistant in 2003, the
team went 11-3 and earned a 28-24 win over Northwestern in the Motor City Bowl.
With a 28-9 record, a bowl win and two wins each against Missouri and Northwestern as
well as a win against Purdue in three years, interest in Meyer was growing. The
University of Utah was calling, and Fisher was going with him.
Tough times
As far as football, the 2004 season was amazing for Fisher, who contributed as a graduate
assistant for Utah. The Utes went 12-0 and earned a Bowl Championship Series berth,
wiping out Big East champion Pittsburgh 35-7 in the Fiesta Bowl.

6. But while Fisher was used to moving, he wasn’t used to being away from family.
“It was probably the most challenging experience I had,” Fisher said. “It was the first
time ever I was totally removed from my immediate family. Bowling Green was two
hours away, so my mom would come for the weekend or I would come home for the
weekend.
“But now I’m 30 hours from knowing anybody aside from coach Meyer and the coaches
on the coaching staff.”
Fisher said he just dived into his old standby to cope — football. He said he used all of
his spare time on becoming the best coach he could be and working on his graduate
school studies (Fisher has a masters in exercise and sports science).
“I didn’t have family time. I didn’t have the cookouts to go to,” Fisher said. “Football
was all I had.”
After that stellar season from Utah that resulted in quarterback Alex Smith getting taken
No. 1 in the NFL draft, the University of Florida grabbed ahold of Meyer’s rising star and
hired him to be their coach.
But because Fisher hadn’t completed his master’s degree (and Meyer said he would like
to be reunited with Fisher someday), Fisher did not accompany Meyer.
“It was a bittersweet type of moment for me,” Fisher said. “I had already started my
masters program at Bowling Green, then when I left to go to Utah, I had to start all over
again.
“When (Meyer) went to Florida, we talked about (me going), but I would have had to
restart my masters program all over again.”
That didn’t mean Fisher wanted to stay at Utah. He stuck around until May of 2005 when
he was one course short of graduating (he completed his degree this past summer) before
taking the linebacker and special teams job at Heidelberg.
It wasn’t his first choice. He actually wanted to work at Shenandoah. His linebackers
coach at Bowling Green, John Bowers, who played with Barnes at James Madison
University, told him about the Hornets job that eventually went to Steve Gill, who has
since left the program.
Though Shenandoah didn’t exactly have an appealing season in 2005 when it went 1-9, it
was paradise compared to Heidelberg. The Student Princes went 0-10, suggesting while
they might have been studs in the classroom, they were anything but royal on the field.
Heidelberg has lost 31 straight games dating back to the 2003 season.

7. “It was the most humbling experience that I had,” Fisher said. “I always tell my guys
you’ve got to learn from good and bad. I’ve seen the difference between doing it the right
way and not doing it the right way, and it was very clear to me (how things were being
done).
“It was one of those situations where I wasn’t in a position to make a lot of changes or
make any determinations. I was just a linebackers coach.”
But things began to look up after the season. In another instance of just how small the
college sports universe can seem despite its vastness, Fisher bumped into Shenandoah
athletic director John Hill — whom he had already talked to during his previous
interview — when Hill came back to Heidelberg for his hall of fame induction at the
school.
Hill won 357 games as the men’s basketball coach in 26 years at Heidelberg and served
as athletic director from 1984 to 2002. (He also has a bachelor’s in education from
Bowling Green. Go figure).
When Gill left, the two discussed the opening, and Fisher was able to have a face-to-face
interview with Barnes, unlike the first time.
In January, he came aboard.
Resurrecting the Hornets
After consecutive conference co-championships, including a Division III playoff berth in
2004, Shenandoah slipped badly to 1-9 in 2005.
The program has always prided itself on its defense, but that side of the ball fell off some
in 2005 — Shenandoah’s defense was second in yardage, but it surrendered 31 points a
game and forced just 15 turnovers, tied for last in the conference.
That’s why Fisher wanted to lay low when he first arrived — he was very concerned
about the team he was coming to because of that dropoff.
“When I first got here I wanted to see the dynamics of the team,” Fisher said. “When I
interviewed previously, coming off the big playoff season, I followed them.
“The next year, I had questions about that in the interview as to what happened with the
team. I was just like, ‘Did you lose all of your seniors?’ and I found out that wasn’t the
case.”
So Fisher watched the workouts and bided his time. He wanted to see the team’s attitude.
He wanted to see who could be pushed. He wanted to see who wanted to be pushed.

8. He said he saw plenty of ability, but not much leadership and a work ethic that was
nothing to brag about.
After he had observed for a couple of weeks, he let loose.
“I attacked people I knew I could attack, and that would spread to other people,” Fisher
said. “The people I attacked, that was the most shocking part to everybody — ‘That guy’s
never been yelled at, or that guy’s never been challenged.’
“Everybody says, ‘OK, that’s Joey Berry (an honorable mention USA South safety last
year). Joey Berry’s been a good player here, and nobody yells at Joey Berry.’
“Well, I made Joey Berry accountable for everybody in that room. I found out who our
leaders were and tried to persuade them (to be leaders) by challenging them that way.”
Junior middle linebacker Wes Fry said the team needed Fisher’s fire.
“He just came out of nowhere and he brought that enthusiasm, that passion, that
intensity,” Fry said. “That kind of gave us all a shock, and we all loved it. It’s what we
really needed this year.”
Junior noseguard Dallas Pryor said Fisher definitely got the team’s attention.
“Probably the first time we got on the field, we saw who the real coach Fisher was,” he
said. “He wasn’t the quiet, laid-back guy, he was the get-after-you guy that if you messed
up, he’d make you go again.
“A lot of people weren’t sure how to perceive him at first. Once we put the pads on, we
saw him as an intense individual. He demanded the best out of you, and if you didn’t give
him that, you weren’t going to play.”
The players rave about how Fisher approaches them for games. During each of
Shenandoah’s weekly press conferences, it’s inevitable that someone will say, “Coach
Fisher put in a great game plan this week. He has us prepared.”
“The fact that he takes so much pride in making sure we execute his calls to perfection
makes them look as good as they do,” Pryor said. “When you come free and make a play,
you know inside his heart he’s happy for you. It’s just one big celebration. You just have
to love that about a coach that wants to put his players in the best situation to make
plays.”
When he’s not instructing his players, Fisher, who is just a few years older than the
players he’s coaching, is someone the players feel they can talk to.

9. “The man loves football and loves us,” Fry said. “We’ll come and watch film and stay
two hours after practice, and just talk about what’s going on. We’ll talk about college,
life, his family.
“Most of his family is back in Ohio, so it’s tough for him being here, not knowing a
whole lot of people. He’s really come close to us because we’re all he really has.”
Fisher and his players can talk to each other and make fun of each other, but as Guerra
said, each side knows there’s a pecking order to the relationships they have.
Fisher said he’s glad he can be hard on the players and they still want to talk to them.
“When we’re on the football field, I’m strictly business,” Fisher said. “It’s very rare that I
crack a joke or I’m not serious about something.
“But I want all of them to understand that I can be a nice guy. I never want a guy to fear
me. There’s some guys that I’ve ripped that I thought, ‘He might no talk to me until the
next week and two hours after practice he’s back in my office, and we’re talking about
what happened that day on the field and other things, too.”
The main things that Fisher is trying to implement this year are general excitement for
what he’s teaching and, as usual, effort.
Fisher said the punt block team he instructs — which has blocked two this year after not
blocking any since 2001 — keeps pestering him to come up with new schemes, which
goes back to effort.
“Work ethic is not divided into divisions,” Fisher said. “Talent and effort may be, but
work ethic’s not. Guys will say, ‘Are we doing (Division I) workouts?’ Quote-unquote
yeah, because that’s what I know. But it’s our workout, it’s not a D-I workout. It’s your
workout if you push it to the limit.”
Pryor certainly gets that.
“Just the other day we watched film, and there was a play I was doing, and I got a hit on
the quarterback,” he said. “(Fisher) was just like ‘Dallas, you’ve got to run that from start
to finish. You’re a pretty fast guy when you want to be. You’ve got to run like that all the
time.’
“When he says things like that, it helps your confidence. I’ve got to play a little better,
I’ve got to try a little harder. He believes in me, that I can do this, I can do that.”
The Shenandoah defense has rewarded his faith, which has resulted in games like Dionte
Beatty’s four-interception performance against Waynesburg in the Hornets’ lone win as
well as their game just 10 days ago, when Shenandoah had an excellent chance to upset
nationally ranked Christopher Newport before a late touchdown resulted in a 17-3 loss.

10. Four times, the defense and special teams gave the offense the ball 52 yards from the end
zone with turnovers and a blocked punt.
“When I first met Garry, the thing that caught me was his passion and his love of the
game of football,” Barnes said. “It’s contagious. You could see with the players it’s
contagious.
“I’m proud of him. I’m pleased he’s on our staff, and I hope he continues on.”
Fisher said whether he’s at Shenandoah five years or 20 years, he just wants to leave his
mark and he never wants to change who he is.
“When I leave here, I want them to say when coach Fisher was here, they blocked all
these punts, this is the kind of defense they had,” Fisher said. “And I also tell my guys all
the time, ‘Someday you’re going to see me at the University of Florida, and you’re going
to say he was the same guy he was at Shenandoah.’”
Meyer certainly wouldn’t mind having him.
“I would love to have him on my staff someday,” he said. “He’s one of the finest young
men I’ve ever been around.”
Few would argue.