Mark McHale’s coaching career took him to nine college teams, four professional teams in foreign countries, and provided him with subject matter for a book through his recruitment of Pro Football Hall of Fame quarterback Brett Favre while he was an offensive line coach at Southern Mississippi.
Through all that travel, one of his college teammates and friends said the James Wood High School and Shepherd College graduate had a constant mindset that helped him.
“He never forgot where he came from,” Steve Clarke said.
On Feb. 26, McHale died at the age of 74 while a resident of Hattiesburg, Mississippi, the city where he coached at Southern Miss from 1986-93 and again in 1996. According to his sister-in-law, Kathy McHale of Winchester, Mark McHale passed away after a recent cancer diagnosis.
McHale’s death came after one final year of coaching football at Columbia Academy in Columbia, Mississippi, in 2024. The renowned McHale — who served as James Wood’s head coach from 2013-16 — helped Columbia improve by four wins from 2023 and reach the Mid-South Association of Independent Schools 4A semifinals last season.
McHale’s acumen coaching offensive linemen resulted in him working with some of college football’s greatest coaches, including Bobby Bowden at both West Virginia University (as a graduate student) and Florida State, Mack Brown at Appalachian State, and Bob Pruett at Marshall.
McHale’s character played just as big a role in his success.
Brian Thomas — who first began coaching football at James Wood as an assistant in 1999 — recently experienced just how far-reaching McHale’s impact was when he and the rest of the Colonels coaching staff attended a coaching clinic in Pittsburgh. He overheard someone say that he played for Marshall from 1999 to 2002, part of the stretch when McHale coached the Herd (2000-04).
The man turned out to be Steve Sciullo, an offensive lineman who started 18 games and played in 28 over two NFL seasons. The Marshall Hall of Famer — one of two people who famously carried quarterback Byron Leftwich down the field in the game Leftwich broke his leg against Akron — is now the head coach at Hampton Township School District in Allison Park, Pennsylvania. Thomas asked Sciullo if he played when McHale was at Marshall.
“He kind of got emotional,” Thomas said. “He had found out coach had passed away, and he said him and a bunch of other guys who played for Coach McHale were in a group chat, talking about their different experiences and memories of [McHale].”
People from Frederick County and Winchester certainly have a lot of fond recollections of McHale.
Jaye Copp served as James Wood’s wrestling coach for 21 years until the end of the 2004 season, and was also an assistant football coach for the Colonels during that time. Copp and McHale played football at James Wood and graduated in 1968, and they would go on to be football teammates who roomed together at the school that is now known as Shepherd University. McHale transferred to Shepherd following one year at West Virginia’s Fairmont State University.
Copp — a linebacker at Shepherd — and McHale — who started three years on Shepherd’s offensive line — were inducted into James Wood’s P. Wendell Dick Hall of Fame in 2007. McHale was inducted into Shepherd’s Athletic Hall of Fame in 2005.
“He’s a very good man,” said Copp, who first met McHale in ninth grade. “A funny guy. Over the years in high school and college, our relationship got stronger. We had a good time and a good friendship.”
Copp was busy raising a family and coaching wrestling and football for much of McHale’s coaching career. But he made a point to visit McHale at the University of South Carolina, Marshall in Huntington, West Virginia, and made two trips to Florida State with his son Josh, who would go on to serve as one of McHale’s assistant coaches at James Wood. Copp got to meet national championship coaches like Bowden, Brown and Pruett when he went to see McHale.
What Copp really enjoyed was having McHale back at James Wood, because their friendship grew even stronger.
“He got to do his passion, and that was to coach football,” said Copp, who spoke to McHale on the phone every Friday prior to Columbia Academy’s games last fall. “He loved it and did a great job with it. He touched a lot of people, and he had a lot of influence on a lot of people. He was a big influence on his coaches at James Wood and my son was fortunate to be one of those. He worked them hard, but they learned a lot, and they did things the right way.”
Clarke first met McHale at Shepherd.
“We became immediate friends, and we stayed lifelong friends,” Clarke said. “He was a great guy. If I called him and asked him for something — can you send me something? — it was boom, right away.”
Clarke and McHale transferred to Shepherd at the same time, with Clarke — a defensive lineman and native of Cumberland, Maryland — arriving from Shenandoah University after the school shut its football program down.
Both players came from successful high school programs, with Clarke graduating from Bishop Walsh High School. As a result, both were hungry to win in college, and they had just the man to lead them in Walter Barr.
McHale played for the legendary Barr at James Wood and for his final two years in college after Barr left the Colonels to take Shepherd’s head coaching job in 1971. Barr guided the Rams to the West Virginia Intercollegiate Athletic Conference title in 1972, the senior year for McHale and Clarke. McHale would later serve as Barr’s offensive coordinator with the Rams from 1975-79.
Clarke said McHale had the makings of a future coach at Shepherd, where McHale was the captain of the offense and Clarke was the captain of the defense.
“He was a real smart guy academically, but he also was a real student of the game of football,” Clarke said. “He always seemed to be a step ahead of everybody intellectually, particularly in football.”
Clarke had finished his fourth year coaching at First Flight High School in North Carolina’s Outer Banks when he found out McHale would become Wood’s head coach in 2013. He asked McHale if he could coach with him, and he’s glad he made the move from North Carolina to do it.
“I coached with him four years, and it was great,” said Clarke, who coached both the offensive and defensive lines with the Colonels. “We brought a sense of discipline to [the players]. We brought a sense of teamwork. We taught them good teams win games, not good players. Things of that nature.
“It was different from when [McHale and I] were at Shepherd, because James Wood was a big winner back in the late ’60s and early ’70s. But with two new high schools added since that time [in Sherando and Millbrook], we were kind of country boys, and everybody else was really fast and more athletic than we were. But we beat some teams we probably shouldn’t have beat just because we were more disciplined.”
Thomas first met McHale when he was the head coach for Warren County High School in 1998 and 1999. Thomas introduced himself as a James Wood coach at a Warren County basketball game, and McHale gave him a tour of Warren County’s facilities and new weight room.
Thomas had stepped away from coaching football for a while at James Wood so he can watch his son compete in athletics for Handley, but returned in 2014. The longtime defensive coordinator said he learned a lot from McHale because of his vast experiences at the highest levels of football.
“You were always trying to pick his brain to learn more,” Thomas said. “Me on the defensive side of the ball, there were times when I had questions, he would say, ‘When I was at Florida State, here’s what [defensive coordinator] Mickey Andrews would do. When I was at Marshall, here’s what Bob Pruett would do.’ I’m sitting there thinking, ‘These are big-time Division I defensive guys that he’s talking about, and he’s giving me small tips that he learned from them.’ He always had an answer.
“With his experience and all the different places he had been, I was glad he was able to come back to James Wood and give some of that experience to the coaches that were on the coaching staff.”
Craig Woshner was James Wood’s coordinator of student activities when McHale was hired as coach in 2013, six years after Barr stepped away from his second stint at James Wood (2005-07). After retiring in 2022, Woshner returned to James Wood last month as interim CSA.
“He worked really well with the younger coaches,” Woshner said. “He was really good at things like breaking down film. His assistant coaches said they learned a lot from him. They had learned a lot from Walter, too, but I think he built on that. We were really appreciative of everything he did for the program.”
James Wood went 1-9 in the season before McHale’s arrival in 2012, and the Colonels went 1-9 in his first season in 2013.
The 2014 season was different. With a 3-5 record through eight games, James Wood made the playoffs for the first time since 2011 by beating Millbrook 21-20 in a comeback effort, then knocking off Handley 27-21 in overtime at home in the regular-season finale to end the Judges’ playoff hopes. Tyler Bishop ran for 221 yards and three TDs on 36 carries, including the winning 10-yard TD in overtime.
The Colonels had not beaten the Judges since 2007. Handley only went 4-6 last year, but it featured four players who signed to play for NCAA Division I schools as scholarship or walk-on players. Thomas said halfway through the season, McHale predicted that the Handley game would decide the playoff fate for both schools.
“[Handley] had some great athletes,” Thomas said. “With [McHale’s] background, playing against Handley was the big game. It was real big for him, and we went out there and beat them. Bishop ran for a bunch of yards, and it was behind Coach McHale’s game plan. We had a certain play where he was like, ‘We’ll run this play until they can stop it.’ And really, they couldn’t stop that play with Tyler Bishop.
“The kids are going to remember that stuff, probably for the rest of their life. Nick Manuel, the new head coach at Millbrook, that was his senior year, and he’ll remember beating Millbrook and Handley back-to-back to make the playoffs. Tyler Bishop, at some point he’s going to be Hall of Famer at James Wood, and McHale was a big influence on him.”
James Wood lost to Sherando in the playoffs. In 2015, The Colonels missed the playoffs but went 5-5 and again beat Handley (45-28), giving James Wood its first consecutive wins over the Judges since 1976-77. An injury-ravaged Colonels team went 2-8 in 2016 to give McHale a final record of 13-28.
McHale got one last season of glory in Mississippi in 2024. McHale’s other coaching stops included Appalachian State University (under Brown), East Carolina University, the University of South Carolina, University of Louisville, the Canadian Football League’s Shreveport Pirates, the World Football League’s Frankfort Galaxy (they won the World Bowl in 1995) and Amsterdam Admirals, and the NFL Europe League (with the Montreal Machine).
His book about Favre — “10 to 4: Brett Favre’s Journey from Rotten Bayou to the Top of the NFL” — was published in 2007. Favre, a Mississippi native, played from 1987-90 at Southern Miss before launching a pro career spent mostly with the Green Bay Packers. Favre expressed great appreciation for McHale in his 2016 Pro Football Hall of Fame speech.
“He fought tooth and nail to get me a scholarship and it came down to the last hour,” Favre said. “When I say last hour, I literally mean last hour. And he fought and he believed in me. … So, Coach, I thank you so much for believing in me and sticking it out and giving me that opportunity.”
Favre is just one of the countless people McHale impacted.
“[McHale] is going to missed by coaches, by players, not just in this area, but by people at all the stops that he’s made,” Thomas said.
— Contact Robert Niedzwiecki at rniedzwiecki@winchesterstar.com
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