By Jesse Swafford | CSwaff Media
The records made Ben Mauk an Ohio high school football legend. Today, the former Kenton star is building something different in Missouri — carrying forward the lessons of faith, family and football that shaped him long before he became a coach.
There was a time when Ben Mauk’s name was synonymous with numbers.
Passing yards. Touchdowns. Records. Championships.
At Kenton High School in northwest Ohio, Mauk quarterbacked an offense that looked like it had arrived from the future. He won Ohio Mr. Football, led the Wildcats to consecutive state championships and finished his career with passing numbers that helped redefine what seemed possible in high school football.
More than two decades later, ask Mauk what any of those records mean to him and the answer comes quickly.
Very little.
“Records are made to be broken, and I’ve chosen to place my treasures up above, not in this world,” Mauk told CSwaff Media. “When you can make a difference and change someone’s life, that’s eternal.”
Today, Mauk is still trying to win football games. Only now, he’s doing it from the sideline at Monett High School in southwest Missouri, where he serves as head coach.
And when he thinks about the coach he wants to become, he doesn’t have to look far.
His father, Mike, is standing on the same sideline.
“I’m in this profession because I want to be like my father,” Mauk said. “I’m here to help our youth and to change the trajectory of their life.”
For a player whose name still occupies a prominent place in Ohio high school football history, perhaps that’s the most interesting part of Ben Mauk’s story.
The records tell you what he did.
His father helped teach him why any of it mattered.
The next Kenton quarterback
Mauk doesn’t remember growing up believing he was destined to become one of Ohio’s great quarterbacks.
He remembers wanting to become the next Kenton quarterback.
Before Mauk was breaking records, he was a kid standing on the Wildcats’ sideline admiring players such as Britton Crates, Mark Molk and Mike Morrison.
“They were all my heroes,” Mauk said. “I grew up wanting to carry on the tradition and success that was established in the ’80s and ’90s.”
Football wasn’t simply something Kenton kids did under the lights on Friday nights.
They competed over it at recess.
Mauk remembers his elementary-school class regularly playing the grade above them for bragging rights. On one occasion, the older kids informed them there would be no game because they were celebrating their own playground version of Homecoming.
Mauk watched fourth graders escort their “homecoming court” across the playground.
His reaction?
“I remember wanting to put it on them the next recess so we would ruin their Homecoming,” Mauk said.
It’s a funny memory more than two decades later, but it also says something about the environment Mauk grew up in. Competition came early in Kenton.
So did an understanding that wearing a Wildcats uniform meant inheriting something from the players who had worn it before.
Mauk remembers sitting in his father’s office after a Friday night game during the 1990s, praying while they waited to learn whether one of those talented Kenton teams had accumulated enough computer points to qualify for the postseason under Ohio’s smaller playoff format.
Some never got the opportunity.
Ben didn’t forget them.
By the time Jostens arrived at Kenton during his sophomore year selling class rings, Mauk had already decided how his class would leave high school.
“I told my classmates not to buy one because we were going to leave high school with two State Championship rings,” Mauk said.
It would be an outrageous prediction from almost anyone else.
Kenton won two.
Finding another way to win
The offense that helped make it happen wasn’t born in a multimillion-dollar football facility.
Some of it was drawn on napkins at McDonald’s.
Mike Mauk was trying to solve a problem.
Kenton was often the smallest school in its conference. Trying to line up and overpower larger programs wasn’t necessarily a recipe for success, so Mike went searching for another way.
Ben remembers car rides filled with cassette tapes of Mouse Davis discussing the Run-and-Shoot offense. Mike attended clinics, recorded speakers, studied film and absorbed whatever offensive ideas he could find.
And sometimes, father and son went to breakfast.
“I’d go with my Dad to McDonald’s for breakfast, and we would often stay past lunchtime just drawing up various formations and plays on McDonald’s napkins,” Mauk said. “My dad would take a lot of those napkins with him, and those would become some of the formations/plays we would install and run during the season.”
When Kenton lost its entire offensive line and running back to graduation entering the 2000 season, the Wildcats adjusted again. They began splitting the running back out as a receiver, creating another weapon in space for a team with smaller offensive linemen and plenty of skill players.
Today, spreading a defense across the width of the field and creating mismatches hardly seems revolutionary.
At the time, Kenton looked different.
“We never really looked at it as if we were changing the game of football,” Mauk said. “My Dad was just trying to find ways to win.”
They found plenty.
In 2001, Kenton completed a 15–0 season with a 40-13 victory over Licking Valley in the Division IV state championship game. Mauk threw for 439 yards and four touchdowns.
A year later, the Wildcats were back, defeating Portsmouth West 45-13 to win a second consecutive state championship. Mauk was named Ohio Mr. Football in 2002.
The statistics became staggering.
But when Mauk looks back, those aren’t the numbers he talks about.
He remembers the people waiting when they came home.
“When we got home from Canton and Massillon, there was barely standing room only in our gymnasium to celebrate those championships,” Mauk said. “We signed tons of footballs, hats, shirts, delivered birthday cakes in our game jerseys to kids, etc. It gave people hope, and it made them proud to be a Wildcat.”
And once again, his thoughts go to the players who came before him.
“For me personally, those Championships were won by all the guys that came before me but never got the opportunity to make the playoffs,” Mauk said. “We were the ones hoisting the trophies and wearing the rings, but they were the ones that laid the foundation and paved the way for us to be successful.”
Years later, hundreds of miles from Kenton, Mauk would carry that lesson with him to Monett.
But getting there would require him to learn what happened when football stopped going according to plan.
Into the fire
College football didn’t unfold as smoothly for Mauk as high school had.
There was a new offense to learn, a new part of the country to call home and new coaches and teammates around him. The success that had seemed almost routine at Kenton was suddenly harder to find.
Then came the injury.
In Wake Forest’s 2006 season opener against Syracuse, Mauk was hit while throwing a pass and suffered a dislocated right shoulder and a broken humerus.
His first thought wasn’t about the severity of the injury.
He just wanted to get off the field.
“I didn’t want to lay there and stop the game,” Mauk said. “I thought they would put my shoulder back in place, tape it up, I’d warm up on the sideline and go back in.”
Then trainers wrapped his injured arm against his body.
“I couldn’t tell which hand was mine,” Mauk said.
That’s when he knew this was different.
Even then, Mauk’s mind immediately went forward. Five months. Six months. Maybe seven. Eventually, he told himself, the pain would be gone.
His mother gave him a reason to believe it.
She had undergone a serious surgery of her own just a week earlier and hadn’t been able to attend the game. Within 24 hours of Ben’s injury, she was on a plane to be with him.
Watching the way she handled her own recovery changed the way he viewed his.
“If she could handle the pain she was going through, I knew I could handle mine,” Mauk said.
The physical recovery eventually brought another question: Could he throw a football again?
For several weeks, Mauk tried throwing left-handed. It didn’t work.
When he returned to throwing with his right arm, the football didn’t feel right in his hand. Frustration followed.
Then his mother stepped in again.
She got him outside and asked him to throw one pass.
Five yards.
It wasn’t a comeback. It wasn’t a touchdown. There were no thousands of people watching.
It was five yards.
And it was enough.
“That gave me the confidence I needed,” Mauk said. “From that point on, I never looked back.”
Mauk’s explanation of that period, however, goes beyond rehabilitation.
It goes to his faith.
He points to the biblical story of Shadrach, Meshach and Abednego — three men thrown into a fiery furnace — when explaining what adversity eventually taught him.
For Mauk, the lesson wasn’t that faith would prevent difficult moments. It was that he wouldn’t face them alone.
“God didn’t just deliver them from the fire,” Mauk said. “He joined them IN the fire.”
Mauk couldn’t have known it then, but the road back would eventually lead him home to Ohio.
And to a phone call that changed everything.
One more week
Coming back from the injury was one thing.
Finding an opportunity to play again was another.
Doctors at Wake Forest had repaired Mauk’s shoulder, but there were questions about whether he would ever throw the football the same way again. His shoulder had been tightened significantly during surgery, and conversations began about possibly changing positions or remaining around the program in more of a mentoring role.
Mauk wasn’t ready for either.
He began looking for another place to play.
Minnesota emerged as a possibility before head coach Glen Mason was fired. Mauk then spent nearly an hour on the phone with the head coach at Evangel University, an NAIA program in Missouri where his sister attended school.
Then, while walking through Pittsburgh Mills Mall and watching some former teammates play in a bowl game, his phone rang.
Brian Kelly was calling.
Kelly had recently taken over at Cincinnati and offered Mauk a scholarship.
“I committed on the spot,” Mauk said.
There was a connection. Mike Mauk knew Cincinnati assistant Tim Hinton from Hinton’s time at Marion Harding and their involvement with the Big 33 Football Classic. Hinton had put in a word for Ben.
But getting to Cincinnati didn’t mean Mauk’s comeback was complete.
During fall camp, he barely took a snap.
While six other quarterbacks received repetitions, Mauk shagged footballs with equipment managers and sometimes lined up at receiver so the other quarterbacks had someone to throw to.
Eventually, he’d had enough.
Mauk packed his belongings and prepared to go home.
His parents convinced him to give it one more week.
One week later, Mauk was catching footballs during practice when Kelly walked up behind him.
“He asked me if I wanted to start the first game,” Mauk said.
Mauk had spent months recovering from an injury that threatened his career. He had changed schools, fought to throw a football normally again and reached the point where he was ready to walk away.
Now he had his chance.
“I had been preparing for that moment for almost a year,” Mauk said.
Cincinnati went on to win 10 games that season.
Mauk is quick to spread the credit. The Bearcats had a strong defense, playmakers on offense and productive special teams.
“My job was just not to mess it up,” he said.
The season gave Mauk something he’d spent nearly a year trying to prove — that he could still play quarterback.
But the path to Cincinnati gave him something that would last much longer.
Sometimes the difference between walking away and getting another opportunity is simply staying long enough to see what happens next.
Coming home for Maty
Mauk’s time at Cincinnati could have opened another door.
He had an opportunity to remain with Brian Kelly’s staff and potentially follow him to Notre Dame. For someone trying to build a future in football, it was the kind of path that could have led almost anywhere.
Mauk chose Kenton.
His younger brother, Maty, was entering high school, and Ben wanted to be there.
“I knew that my faith and my family were worth more than football,” Mauk said. “When Maty entered high school, I knew I was going to move home and coach him.”
What followed wasn’t always easy.
Ben had left Kenton as one of the most accomplished quarterbacks in Ohio high school football history. Maty was now growing up in the same town, playing the same position and carrying the same last name.
At first, Ben didn’t fully understand the weight of that.
“I didn’t realize the pressure that Maty had on him trying to live up to what I had done,” Mauk said.
Their relationship evolved as Maty got older. By his junior year, Ben said, his younger brother began to blossom — not by becoming another version of Ben, but by becoming himself.
Maty grew his hair and his beard. Sometimes he ignored the read Ben had given him and created something outside the pocket instead.
Ben learned to let him.
“Maty taught me that you have to let kids be who they are within the standards of your program,” Mauk said.
The results became historic in their own right. Maty brought crowds back to Robinson Field, helped return Kenton to the state championship game and eventually surpassed records his older brother had once set.
For Ben, however, the memories that remain aren’t limited to numbers.
He remembers getting to coach his little brother.
He remembers answering his questions.
He remembers praying with him before games.
“I cherish the opportunity I had to coach him,” Mauk said.
Years later, Ben can see that experience as more than a chance to coach a talented quarterback.
It helped teach him how to coach people.
Familiar ground
When Ben Mauk arrived in Monett, Missouri, he saw something familiar.
A proud football town. A program with history. A community that remembered what winning football looked like.
Monett had won three state championships, but when Mauk took over, the program was coming off a winless season.
He wasn’t interested in starting over.
He wanted to reconnect what had been built before him with the players responsible for carrying it forward.
“Monett reminds me a lot of Kenton,” Mauk said. “There is a storied program and tradition here.”
One of Mauk’s first priorities was bringing former Cubs back around the program. He started an alumni golf outing and helped establish a Touchdown Club, creating opportunities for former players to support — and interact with — the players wearing Monett purple today.
Mauk wants his players to understand that the people whose names are part of Monett football history once walked the same streets, attended the same schools and spent time in the same places they do.
For a kid growing up in Monett, he believes seeing that matters.
“It gives our kids hope that they can be successful on the football field, but more importantly, that they can be successful when they graduate,” Mauk said.
There are signs that connection is taking hold.
Mauk said the program had 53 players before he arrived. Today, that number is approaching 100.
But he doesn’t measure the program’s progress only by varsity wins.
Monett now has kids involved from kindergarten through high school. There is a Sunday program for kindergarten through second grade, coaches working with players in third through sixth grade, a growing middle-school program and full freshman and junior-varsity schedules. On Friday nights, the Cubs are developing enough depth to play two-platoon football.
Ben has also been able to make the rebuild a family effort. His older brother, Jonathan, serves as Monett’s defensive coordinator, bringing a championship coaching background of his own to the staff.
“His expertise and ability to connect with kids has helped our program move in the right direction,” Mauk said.
What Mauk is trying to build stretches well beyond the varsity team on Friday nights.
At the center of it are four standards Mauk wants every Monett player to understand:
Character. Unity. Bravery. Service.
the foundation Mauk uses to define the program he is building at Monett. Photo provided.
Together, they spell CUBS.
Character means doing things with integrity. Unity means learning to love and care for the people around you. Bravery means facing adversity rather than running from it. Service means understanding that being part of a football program also means giving something back to the community supporting it.
For Mauk, those standards matter because he’s not building Monett simply as a stop on the way to somewhere else.
“I’m not coaching for money, and I’m not coaching to move up,” Mauk said. “I want to be like my dad. I want to invest in the kids in our community and make them proud to be Cubs.”
It’s a philosophy shaped by the place where he grew up.
The players change. The coaches change. Eventually, even the people in the stands change.
The program remains.
“Monett Football has been here long before us, and it will be here long after us,” Mauk said. “It is not our team, but it is our time, and what we do with our time matters.”
Like father, like son
For most of Ben Mauk’s life in football, Mike Mauk has been the coach.
Ben was the quarterback.
Then Ben became the coach.
Now, at Monett, his father is the assistant.
The titles may have changed. Their relationship hasn’t.
“My father is the best football coach I have ever been around, but he is an even better father,” Mauk said.
When Ben took over at Monett, he knew he wanted Mike beside him.
The coach who built Kenton into a state championship program and spent decades searching for new ways to teach and win was now helping his son build one of his own.
What strikes Ben is that the years haven’t taken away his father’s curiosity.
Mike still studies the game. He still looks for answers. He still gets excited about players and their potential in much the same way Ben remembers from his childhood in Kenton.
For a first-time head coach trying to rebuild a program, having that experience nearby has been invaluable.
But Ben knows it won’t always be there.
“I know it can’t last forever, but I can’t imagine coaching football without my father with me,” Mauk said.
For Ben, however, Mike’s greatest influence has never been contained to a playbook.
“He was my father, so I knew that he loved me, but he taught me how to love others,” Mauk said.
Ben remembers a coach who was patient and kind. Someone who didn’t keep a record of wrongs. Someone who helped kids who had less than others, believed in players who might never become stars and made them feel like they belonged to something bigger than themselves.
Some of those players, Ben said, might not have seen the field at another program.
For Mike, that didn’t make them less important.
“They would run through a brick wall for him,” Mauk said.
Only after becoming a head coach himself did Ben fully understand how much time his father had given to other people’s children.
The hours at the football facility. The time at school. The conversations. The relationships. The countless moments that never appeared on Friday night’s scoreboard.
As a kid, Ben saw his father coach.
As a head coach, he understands what it cost — and what it meant.
A changing landscape
High school football looks different than it did when Ben Mauk played at Kenton.
Players have more ways to be seen. Recruiting happens in public. Highlights travel instantly. Private training, camps, recruiting services and social media have created opportunities that didn’t exist when Mauk was trying to become the next quarterback at his hometown high school.
Mauk understands why players take advantage of them.
He also worries about what can get lost along the way.
“Everything kids do today is scrutinized,” Mauk said. “I don’t necessarily like how self-centered our society has become, but I understand that kids have to do certain things to get noticed.”
Mauk’s own experience shapes how he approaches recruiting with his players.
The attention he received at Kenton, he said, came because the Wildcats were winning. Neither he nor Maty worked with private quarterback trainers, and their father wasn’t interested in promoting one player above the rest of the team.
Their job was to help Kenton win.
Mauk still believes winning — and becoming good enough that college coaches can’t ignore you — carries more weight than chasing attention.
He remembers advice once given to him by the quarterback trainer who worked with Pro Football Hall of Famer Warren Moon.
“If you’re good enough, they will find you.”
That’s the message Mauk tries to give his players at Monett, particularly as recruiting services, private training and the pursuit of exposure become increasingly prominent around high school sports.
His concern isn’t with players having opportunities.
It’s with making sure the pursuit of those opportunities doesn’t overshadow what they already have.
“High school football is the last time kids will play for the TEAM,” Mauk said.
In college, rosters change. Players transfer. Money and contracts have become part of the landscape. Beyond college, football becomes a profession for the small percentage who make it that far.
High school is different.
These are the kids players grew up with. Their classmates. Their neighbors. Their families are in the stands. The community on Friday night is their community.
For Mauk, that’s something worth protecting.
Because eventually, every player’s time runs out.
The question is what they do with it while it’s theirs.
What remains when the records don’t
For years, Ben Mauk’s name was attached to records.
Eventually, records get broken.
Mauk knows that better than most. He watched his own younger brother surpass marks he had once set, and he has watched football continue to evolve long after his playing career ended.
He doesn’t sound particularly bothered by any of it.
Ask him what means more today — seeing his name in a record book or hearing from a former player that he made a difference in his life — and there isn’t much of a decision to make.
“When you can make a difference and change someone’s life, that’s eternal,” Mauk said.
That perspective is rooted deeply in his faith.
For Mauk, accepting Christ is more significant than anything he accomplished with a football in his hands. It’s the foundation through which he understands the adversity he has experienced, the opportunities he’s received and the responsibility he now feels toward the people around him.
Football remains an important part of his life.
It just isn’t the most important part.
His family is.
Mauk is a father to two young children, Benny, 5, and Evelyn, 2. He hopes his son grows up to play football, but when Ben talks about the kind of future he wants for Benny, the game quickly becomes secondary.
“I pray that I can be a father like my father was to me,” Mauk said.
That may be the clearest thread running through his story.
Mike Mauk taught his son football. He also taught him what Ben believes football can be used for.
A way to reach people.
A way to give kids somewhere to belong.
A way to build confidence, community and relationships that remain long after the final score is forgotten.
Ben doesn’t pretend to know where any of it ultimately leads.
“I have no clue what my future holds, but I do know Who holds my future,” Mauk said.
Twenty-five years ago, Mike Mauk was searching for ways to help a small Ohio high school win football games.
He listened to cassette tapes.
He attended clinics.
He drew plays on McDonald’s napkins.
His son threw the passes. Kenton won the championships. Records fell. A community celebrated.
Today, hundreds of miles from Kenton, the titles have reversed.
Ben is the head coach.
Mike stands beside him.
And somewhere among nearly 100 kids wearing Monett purple, another generation is being taught that the program belonged to people before them, that it will belong to people after them and that what they do with their time matters.
Ben Mauk spent his playing career leaving his name in record books.
Now he’s trying to leave something somewhere else.
In people.
About Context
Context is a CSwaff Media original series that goes beyond the highlights, statistics and headlines to tell more of the story behind the athletes, coaches and personalities who shape sports.
