At age 10, Alphonso Townsend had to weigh his options.
Told that he was over the weight limit for midget football he could have simmered in his disappointment.
Instead, he followed his other sports passion and played fifth grade basketball.
“When I was 10 years old I tried out for the midget league and I didn’t make the weight limit,” Townsend said. “That’s when I really started going all in for basketball. It was all basketball until seventh grade when I was able to play football at West Junior High.
“Lawrence Taylor was always my favorite football player and Charles Barkley was always my favorite basketball player. I used to try to emulate my football game after Lawrence Taylor and my basketball game after Charles Barkley.”
Eventually, though, LT’s game was probably always going to win out over Sir Charles’ game.
Townsend, better known to most people as “Biggie,” was a good basketball player in his Lima Senior High School days. But he wasn’t going to be recruited by Big Ten or SEC schools in that sport like he would be in football.
Unlike midget league, there are no weight limits in college football. And if, like Townsend, you grow to be 6-foot, 6-inches tall, weigh 285 pounds and have uncommon agility for someone that size college football recruiters will find you.
That seventh-grade choice took him to being recruited by Ohio State to play football, to being selected first-team all-state, to playing in the Big Ten at Michigan State and finally brought him back to Lima, where he will be on the sideline to coach his first game as Lima Senior’s head football coach on Friday night.
When he was hired as Lima Senior’s coach in February he called it his dream job and said., “This is a very important day for me. I played here, I live here, I just got inducted into the (Lima Senior) Hall of Fame. With the support of the community and the staff and the students at Lima Senior I think we’ll have a very successful season in the upcoming year and in the future. It’s just a blessing. I’m grateful for the opportunity.”
This is Townsend’s first head coaching job. He has been a football assistant coach at Lima Senior since 2014 and also coached basketball and baseball there at the lower levels.
In his first six months as a head coach he has learned a dream job can also become a details job.
“The biggest difference is just the organization part of it. When you’re the assistant coach you just listen to the head coach. But now you’re the coach and everything runs through you and you have the last word on everything,” Townsend said.
“I’m grateful to have a great coaching staff that has been working well together. They’re helping me and making the transition easier for me.”
The transition from young man to grown man wasn’t always easy for Townsend.
His father, grandfather and grandmother all died in a 5-month span from September to February during his junior year of high school.
His father died while in prison at the London Correctional Institute. His mother had to work nights at St. Rita’s Hospital to support her family (Townsend and three sisters) and didn’t get to watch his games.
And the football part of his life wasn’t perfect at that point, either.
He verbally committed to Ohio State in August of 1999 and signed as a defensive lineman with the Buckeyes in February of 2000, which made him the first Lima Senior football player since William White in 1984 to sign with OSU.
But under the NCAA rules at that time, he needed to get a 17 composite score on the ACT to be able to get an athletic scholarship. He came up one point short with a 16.
So he headed off to Fork Union Prep School in Virginia to try to get his academics up to the NCAA’s standards.
All during that school year, he said he planned to sign again with Ohio State. But in January 2001 he visited Michigan State and North Carolina, where his football idol Lawrence Taylor played in college. And on signing day, he chose Michigan State over Ohio State.
Ohio State had fired John Cooper, the coach who recruited Townsend, in early January. On signing day, he said that affected his decision “a little.”
Cooper’s replacement, Jim Tressel, said at his signing day press conference that OSU’s offer had never been withdrawn and the decision not to sign with Ohio State was Townsend’s alone.
Townsend sat out the 2001 season at Michigan State and finally got to suit up in 2002.
But that was his only season at Michigan State and another coaching change might have played a role in that outcome.
Bobby Williams, who had brought Townsend to East Lansing, was fired as MSU’s head coach with three games left in the 2002 season and John L. Smith replaced him in January 2003.
Townsend’s next and last stop in college football was at the University of North Alabama.
He says his struggles might have made him a better coach and drew a comparison with Lima Senior boys basketball coach Quincey Simpson.
“I think the kids enjoy being around both of us because some of these kids don’t have father figures. Some of them look up to me and Quincey as father figures. There was a time when Quincey and I used to be in their shoes. We can understand some of the things they live with at school and outside school,” he said.
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