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Practice won’t begin for another 20 minutes, but the coach’s office at Arlin Field has taken on the feel of Grand Central Station during rush hour.
Members of Mansfield Senior coach Chioke Bradley’s staff are busy hammering out the details of the day’s schedule while players file through the cramped space on their way to the adjacent locker room.
Bradley’s door is always open — both literally and figuratively. It is something the 1994 Senior High grad prides himself on more than conference championships or postseason berths.
“I just love being around kids. I love watching the process and being a part of the process,” says Bradley, who is one victory shy of 50 in this his eighth season as head coach. “To sit back and see kids go off and be very successful and have phenomenal careers and raise families and be positive role models themselves, it makes you sleep real good at night.”
A Football Prodigy
Before Chioke Bradley was one of the most successful coaches in Mansfield Senior history, he was one of the school’s most sought-after recruits. Numerous major college coaches courted the ultra-athletic defensive back, including Ohio State’s John Cooper and Michigan’s Gary Moeller.
The 5-foot-10, 195-pound Bradley was a three-year letterman who helped Senior High win an Ohio Heartland Conference title and reach the playoffs for the first time in school history in the fall of 1993. The Tygers were 23-7 during his three varsity seasons.
“Chioke was a great athlete and a student of the game,” says Stan Jefferson, Senior High’s head coach from 1993 to 2002. “He was ahead of his time in that regard.”
Jefferson, who would spend 13 years working on the Ohio State football staff as associate director of football operations, director of player development and director of player personnel before retiring in August, was instrumental in molding a young Bradley. Jefferson was Mansfield Senior’s track coach and mentored Bradley from the time he was in the eighth grade.
“I was raised by my mother and my grandparents. My father wasn’t around, so I had to have other people step in and fill that void for me,” Bradley says. “Stan Jefferson came into my life at a young age and he showed me how to be a pretty good athlete and a good person.”
In three seasons as a starter in Senior High’s secondary, Bradley made 269 tackles and intercepted 12 passes. He was an All-Ohio first team selection as a senior after making 97 stops and returning two interceptions for touchdowns. He was selected to play in the prestigious Big 33 all-star game in Hershey, Pennsylvania.
“He was being recruited at that time by Ohio State,” says Jefferson, a Mansfield City Schools and Ohio High School Football Coaches Association Hall of Famer. “They ended up getting Damon Moore from Fostoria instead.”
While OSU turned its attention elsewhere, Michigan was still in the hunt for Bradley. The Wolverines reluctantly backed off because Bradley’s academics weren’t in order when national signing day rolled around in early February.
“I had committed to the University of Michigan, but I didn’t take the academic thing as serious as I should have,” Bradley says. “That academic piece can stop you from doing so much and that was one of the road blocks for me that kind of closed the door on the Michigan deal.
“I didn’t qualify on the ACT until April (of 1994). By that time a lot of Big Ten schools had already made their decisions.”
Michigan’s loss turned out to be Bowling Green coach Gary Blackney’s gain. Bradley signed with the Falcons and became the program’s first true freshman to start in more than a decade. He was a four-year letterman and the 1997 recipient of the Coaches’ Award.
“At the time Gary Blackney had that thing rolling,” Bradley says. “Paul Ferraro, who was my defensive coordinator at the time, told me I was going to be able to come in and play right away.
It was truly a blessing that my support group was able to mold me into a good young man and get me focused to the point where I was able to get those opportunities.”
Coming Home
While Bradley had opportunities to play professionally, a career in the NFL never materialized. He soon found himself back in his hometown.
“I was able to get a shot at the NFL from various teams, which was another experience in itself,” Bradley says. “But the best thing that happened to me was I was able to come back home and share my journey with our Mansfield city kids. I wouldn’t change it for anything in the world.
“I could have gone on to Michigan or played in the NFL, but God brought me back here. I always say this is what God had in store for me. It’s been a wonderful ride and I’m still on this ride.”
Bradley served on Jamie Masi’s coaching staff in 2008 and 2009. Bradley became the head coach in 2010 after Masi’s teaching position was eliminated in a cost-cutting measure by the district. Senior High, which was 24-46 from 2003 to 2009, is 49-29 in Bradley’s seven-plus seasons with three Ohio Cardinal Conference championships, three playoff appearances and the first unbeaten regular season in program history (2013).
Victories, conference crowns and postseason berths only tell a fraction of Bradley’s story, though. Like Jefferson was to him, Bradley is a mentor to young men whose circumstances mirrored his own.
“Today’s young people are looking for leadership and Chioke is an authentic leader,” Jefferson says. “There’s an old saying: They don’t care what you know until they know that you care.
“Players who play for Chioke know that he cares.”
Count Jacob Supron among them. Supron graduated from Mansfield Senior in 2011 and became an All-Ivy League cornerback at Brown University, where he graduated in 2015 with a degree in mechanical engineering.
None of it would have been possible, Supron insists, without Bradley.
“Coach Bradley believed in me before I believed in myself,” says Supron, a design engineer for an automotive sensor company near Providence, Rhode Island. “If Chioke hadn’t been looking out for me, I wouldn’t have had the opportunities that I’ve had.
“It’s his relatability. He comes from the same background as a lot of the Mansfield Senior kids and he acts as a father figure to a lot of kids who don’t have a father figure.”
It’s a role Bradley is ideally suited for, classmate and longtime friend Effie James says.
“Chioke is built for this era of kids. He’s such a personable guy,” James says. “When we were young I would say if anybody has a problem with Chioke they need to re-evaluate their life because he is a guy nobody should ever have a problem with. He’s got a great heart for the kids of this city.”
Like Bradley, James attended Bowling Green on a football scholarship but an injury derailed his playing career. He returned to Mansfield Senior and was the boys basketball coach from 2008 to 2012. And like Bradley, James took his role as mentor and surrogate father seriously.
“Me and Effie are cut from the same loaf of bread,” Bradley says. “I truly understand how his clock ticks, because my clock ticks the same way.”
Continued Success
The Tygers are 3-1 going into Friday’s game at Maple Heights. With Big Ten recruit Jornell Manns (Minnesota) in the backfield and a wealth of talent surrounding him, Mansfield Senior should again be in the hunt for a conference championship and playoff berth this fall.
Manns is grateful to have an advocate like Bradley in his corner.
“Chioke is always looking out for us,” Manns says. “He helped me get my name out there. I don’t know if I’m where I’m at today without him.”
It’s not unusual to find Bradley ferrying players to college campuses across the Midwest during the summer months.
“What he does behind the scenes, people will never know. I’ll call him and ask what he’s doing and he’ll say, ‘I’m taking this kid to this college to look around,’ ” James says. “This guy goes to a coaching clinic and people are just attracted to him like a magnet. He makes all these connections because he knows at some point it could help a kid.
“Success on the football field is an added bonus because I truly believe he would do the things he’s doing even if they weren’t successful. He is trying to get kids ahead of the game so we can make college an expectation and not a surprise.”
The 41-year-old Bradley sees it as his responsibility.
“We’ve always had great kids come through Mansfield city schools. Not just athletes, but great kids,” Bradley says. “I can go on and on about the great Mansfield kids who have come through here and I’m honored to help any way I can.”
