Cisco Recalled for Jefferson Greatness, Care for Kids & Staff Over Half-Century as Coach
By
Doug Donnelly
Special for MHSAA.com
October 1, 2026
Marc Cisco was a gruff old football coach who was intimidating and set in his ways.
Not really.
In fact, to those who knew him, Cisco was more like a teddy bear who had passions for good football, watching student-athletes play the game right and spending time with his close circle of friends.
Cisco died Sept. 24 in Grand Rapids at the age of 90, leaving a legacy on high school football in southeast Michigan. He was best known for coaching the Monroe Jefferson varsity football team for a remarkable 47 years. His teams won 241 games, including the 1994 Class B championship in the Pontiac Silverdome.
“It appeared he was this mean old guy. He might yell at you, but he would be the first one to pat you on the back and tell you good job,” said one of his former players, Jeff Potter. “He really cared about his kids and nurtured his players. He was mostly a big teddy bear.”
Cisco made a career in education as a teacher and coach. In addition to coaching the Jefferson football team for 47 years, he coached track & field for almost as many seasons.
His son, Zeke, played for his father and was the Jefferson quarterback. Later, Zeke was a walk-on at the University of Nebraska. When Zeke was away at college and would come home for a visit each May, he would volunteer to work at the Jefferson Invitational track meet because that’s where he would find his dad.
“He was just a coach,” Zeke said. “My childhood was all about sports. If I wanted to see him in the fall, I had to go to practice. If I want to hang around with him in the winter, he kept score at basketball games, so I would go to the basketball games. He kept the scoreboard during wrestling meets. I usually would sit under his legs, underneath the scorers’ table. I would hit him in the legs a lot because he would get bored and forget to add the score on.
“He was nestled in the fabric of the high school in every way, shape or form.”
Niles Kruger, sports editor at The Monroe News, said when Zeke was at Nebraska, Marc Cisco was usually one of the first coaches every Friday to call in his stats and scores because he would be jumping in a car to drive to watch his son play.
“He was one of my favorite postgame interviews because he was always the same, win or lose,” Kruger said. “He was quite a character and pretty good at cussing. He would always say afterwards, ‘Clean that up for me.’”
Cisco had a tremendous relationship with his assistant coaches. Several members of the Jefferson coaching staff were there for at least 40 of Cisco’s 47 years.
“His vacations, his fun things to do, were always with other coaches, their wives and their families,” Zeke Cisco said. “They would get together for card nights. They would go to Toledo Raceway (harness racing) Park. Pretty much every coach’s driveway, roof and deck were all built by the other coaches on the staff. They took care of each other.”
Cisco’s legacy includes an extended coaching tree filled with former players. Zeke has built a very successful program at Byron Center. Jason Gendron is the Gibraltar Carlson coach and in the middle of a tremendous run with the Marauders. Potter has coached at Ida for a decade and made that program a playoff regular.
“He was a big part of why I became a coach,” Potter said. “He was like a second family. My dad coached with him for 40 years. He was my Godfather. Our offense now is pretty much the same offense we ran in high school.”
Cisco had spent time in Florida after retiring but made his home in Reading near the Michigan-Indiana border the last few years.
“He would drive up to our games on Fridays,” Zeke said. “He would be in the parking lot at 3 o’clock.”
Marc had health issues over the last year, suffering from a stroke and congestive heart failure. He took a turn for the worse a little more than a week ago. He and his wife Donna, also a former coach at Jefferson, were together for more than 56 years. She survives.
Marc Cisco was a legend long before he started blowing the coaching whistle. Growing up in Morenci, he earned 16 varsity letters – four each in football, basketball, baseball and track – before graduating in 1954. The Bulldogs football team won 44 straight games during his career, and he made The Associated Press all-state team three times.
Larry Tuttle, the winningest baseball coach in Michigan high school history, was a student at Morenci when Cisco was a player.
“I never missed one of his games because my mom and dad would go to all of them,” he said. “Later on, we became good friends. He was such a great football player.”
Cisco played football at Michigan State University under head coach Duffy Daugherty and later at the University of Toledo.
He got his teaching start at Britton Macon High School in Lenawee County, before moving closer to the banks of Lake Erie and Jefferson in 1961.
It was 1963 when Cisco first coached Jefferson, leading the varsity to a 4-3 season – the first of three straight winning campaigns. The tide turned in 1966 when Jefferson went 0-6. The team won seven games over the next three seasons before Cisco stepped down.
He regained the job in 1973 and stayed until 2012. He was the Bears’ varsity coach 41 years in all. From the time his 1983 team went 9-0 until the mid-2000s, Jefferson was a model of consistency, producing winner after winner. The 1993 team went 10-1, the 1994 team 12-1, and the 1999 team 11-2. It was the 1994 Bears that won the Class B title.
Zeke Cisco said when his father retired, it was rather unceremonious. There was no big announcement or celebration, although the school had much earlier renamed the football and track stadium after him.
“He just sort of stepped away,” he said. “He would come up here and watch his grandsons play.”
Marc Cisco never took himself or his wins too seriously.
“You know, I used to always give him hell,” Zeke said. “I'd call him and go, oh, ‘It's the winningest coach Monroe County.’ He goes, ‘I'm also the losingest coach in Monroe County.’”
Doug Donnelly has served as a news and sports reporter at the Adrian Daily Telegram and the Monroe News for 30 years, including 10 years as city editor in Monroe. He's written a book on high school basketball in Monroe County and compiles record books for various schools in southeast Michigan. He is now publisher and editor of The Blissfield Advance, a weekly newspaper. E-mail him at [email protected] with story ideas for Jackson, Washtenaw, Hillsdale, Lenawee and Monroe counties.
PHOTOS (Top) Marc Cisco coaches his Monroe Jefferson football team. (Middle) From left, John Castiglione, Cisco and Dave Potter monitor the action at the Silverdome during their team’s 1994 Class B Final. (Below) Cisco, while starring at Morenci. (Jefferson photos courtesy of the Monroe News. Morenci photo courtesy of Larry Tuttle.)
Record-Setting Viney Gained Lifelong Confidence at Marine City
By
Paul Costanzo
Special for MHSAA.com
July 17, 2024
Olivia Viney didn’t have to look far for inspiration while taking on the challenge of applying to veterinary school.
The 2015 Marine City graduate and record-setting placekicker simply drew from her own experience as a high school athlete.
“It just really taught me that I could do hard things,” Viney said. “I was very involved when I was in school. I did soccer, theater, travel soccer and then football. Especially with football, I learned that if I put my mind to it, I can do it. That helped me to excel in undergrad. When it came time to get accepted to vet school, it was like, ‘This is what I have to do,’ and I did it. That was very confidence-building. It taught me that I really can do hard things.”
Viney, who graduated from Saginaw Valley State University in 2019 and Michigan State Veterinary School in 2023, is now working as an associate veterinarian at Deporre Veterinary Hospital in West Bloomfield.
Accomplishing her goals is nothing new to Viney, and not at all a surprise to those who watched her come through the Mariners athletic program.
“She was very serious, she was focused and she was dialed in,” said Dave Frendt, who coached Viney in both football and soccer at Marine City. “She knew what she wanted to accomplish, and she set out to do that. She was a fierce competitor and very driven. She was a good leader in that way where she was kind of feisty, but the team would follow that.”
Viney was an all-state soccer player for the Mariners, leading them to a pair of District titles and a Macomb Area Conference Gold title during her four years as a varsity player. It’s the sport she grew up playing, but the one she was most known for after graduation was football. American football.
The 5-foot-1-ish center attacking midfielder found herself in the MHSAA football record book after hitting all seven of her extra point attempts in the Mariners’ 2013 Division 4 Final victory against Grand Rapids South Christian.
“I think it makes sense,” she said. “There were lots of great soccer players, even that I played with. Great players that had gone through school, so I don’t think it’s weird that people remember me for that. When I talk with people, they’ll connect the dots – ‘Oh, you played football.’
“I was more accomplished as a soccer player and had more accolades. But I’m prouder of my football accomplishments, because it was really setting a pathway for girls that wanted to get into that. It’s so much more common now, or accepted. Even though it’s been almost 11 years since we won at Ford Field, I’m so proud of high school Olivia and what she did, the courage she had. She wasn’t scared of anything.”
Viney joined Marine City’s football program as a sophomore, playing on the junior varsity squad. While she was there only to kick, she was all in when it came to practicing.
“Coach (Joe) Fregetto made me do tackling drills and drills in the mud – I really did earn my spot on the team,” Viney said. “I think it was mostly because he didn’t know what to do with me, so I guess just do everything that the guys do.”
She handled varsity kicking duties the next two years, setting the school record in 2013 for most extra points made during a single season – a record that still stands. Former Mariners coach Ron Glodich said that Viney actually never missed an extra point that season, as the four failed attempts were never even kicked.
It was her performance in the Division 4 Final that gained her statewide acclaim, as she hit 7 of 7 attempts, tying a record for most extra points made in a Finals game. It stood until a pair of kickers hit eight in 2022.
One record that never will be broken, however, is Viney becoming the first female to score a point at the Finals.
“Everything was so surreal, I was so nervous,” Viney said. “One of my most vivid memories was that day, or maybe the day before, Coach Glodich said, ‘Just so you know, when you get to the field, the goal posts are two feet narrower on each side. But that doesn’t matter if you kick it in the middle.’
“We got there and watched the team before us so we could get used to it, and I remember thinking, ‘Oh my gosh, they’re so narrow.’ … Seeing myself up on the big screen was kind of almost a little embarrassing, because I knew people were talking about me being the girl. But once we were in the game, it was a lot like any other game. I was just waiting for my turn to go on the field and do my job.”
Viney later was featured in Sports Illustrated’s “Faces in the Crowd” – ironically, right below current U.S. Women’s National Team forward Mallory Pugh – but she wasn’t looked at any differently by her teammates, and she wouldn’t have wanted to be.
“That team was all about sacrifice for the team,” Frendt said. “For them to realize, ‘None of us can do what she does, so we better embrace it, because no one else can do it.’ They really made her feel like part of the team. They wanted to protect her, too. But she was tough. She wasn’t going to take anything.”
Viney went to SVSU to study biology and played for its club soccer team. During her time there, she volunteered at an animal shelter and made the decision she wanted to help animals in her career. She works in general practice at Deporre, and would eventually like to work in shelter medicine.
She and her husband Matt, who were married in May, live with their three dogs. She’s not far from home, and in the spring of 2023 she visited Frendt’s college and career readiness class to speak with students at her alma mater. Her presentation and the attention to detail and hard work she put into it, Frendt said, blew his students away. Not that it surprised him.
“That’s poured into her life after sports,” he said of her work ethic. “She just kept plugging away. She’s awesome.”
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PHOTOS (Top) Marine City’s Olivia Viney kicks at the 2013 11-Player Football Finals, also during her spring soccer season, and cares for one of her patients as an associate veterinarian. (Middle) Viney graduated from MSU’s Veterinary School in 2023. (Photos courtesy of Olivia Viney.)