Eastlake North coach Shawn Dodd gets out of comfort zone in acting role | Opinion

A handful of coaches at North have been trying to teach their student-athletes the importance of being well-rounded and getting out of their comfort zone.

What better way to do it than showing the teenagers what they mean.

The North drama department recently put on the show “Beauty and the Beast.” Part of the cast included head football coach Shawn Dodd, baseball coach Kyle Stahlberg, freshman football coach Pat Kwiatikowski and defensive line coach Todd Shannon.

“This was our first time,” Dodd said. “This was completely out of our comfort zone. But the whole point of the lesson was to get out of your comfort zone, try different things. Doing something like this bridges the gap with our kids.”

Dodd said the coaches had no speaking parts in the production — which included five sold-out shows — but that the group was all part of the bar scene where Gastone is singing a number.

“We ended up dancing on barrels,” Dodd said with a laugh. “This was a first for us — none of us had done anything like this before. But the kids were great. They took us under their wing and taught us theater skills. The kids did an awesome job.”

How did it go?

“Well as soon as we got on stage, every single phone went up to video us,” Dodd said. “I think it was online before the scene was over. We looked like goofballs, but it was great. We had a blast.”

What could have been

The list of high school football players from the Greater Cleveland area who are going on to play at the college level is a long and impressive one.

Among them are Gilmour’s Tyler Leroux, Perry’s Kolston Brewster, North’s Tyler Dodd and Cleveland Heights’ Zaire Webb.

What do they have in common?

There were all teammates at Gilmour under Dodd before Dodd left to take the North job.

Leroux and Brewster are going to Buffalo. Tyler Dodd is going to John Carroll. Webb is going to Georgetown.

Add in a few of last year’s graduates — Joey Iveljic (who left Gilmour for North) is at Trine University and Jonathan Abrams (who stayed at Gilmour) is at Holy Cross — and the makings of a darn good team were there before things split up.

“Yeah, we would have been loaded, man,” Shawn Dodd said.