With Ryan Sheahan leaving his head coaching position with the Guelph Gryphons to return to the Calgary Dinos as their head coach, the Gryphons promoted Mark Surya to the team’s top job.
“I'm pumped up,” the 35-year-old said of his move from being the team’s offensive coordinator.
“I don't know if this is the right or wrong way to look at it, but this is just how I feel. This is a national championship-level program and these types of things don't come up very often. It's not lost on me that in different circumstances, if I didn't have a five-year head start here and if (University of Guelph director of athletics) Scott (McRoberts) and (U of G associate director, athletics) Wally (Gabler) wanted to and they opened it up to the country, there's a lot of people that would love to have this opportunity to lead this team.
“Maybe it's just in perspective, I'm very humble to be the next head coach here and lead a long line of previous great leaders like a coach (Dan) McNally, or coach (Kyle) Walters. You hear about the legends of them and how they ran the team and now to even consider myself in the same responsibility that they had is super special. It just gives me a different perspective on the job.”
It didn’t take Surya long to realize that his new job comes with a lot more pressure.
“I do feel the responsibility of the 100 young men in that locker room,” he said. “I'm trying to find the best way to serve them as their head coach. You allow yourself the five minutes to be excited and then you know the task that lies ahead. That's really how I'm looking at it. It's my responsibility to take care of those young men in the locker room.
“I always laugh. Everybody wants the job until you know what the job requires."
He said the first thing is to put a good staff in place.
"I'm just really the point guard – give everybody the runway to be successful with whatever job they have within the organization and clear any obstacles for them to be able to flourish.”
Sheahan guided the Gryphons for five years, joining the team as the head coach after being the offensive coordinator in Calgary. While the 2020 season was cancelled due to the pandemic, Sheahan’s team reached the league semifinals twice (2019 and 2021), but didn’t qualify for the playoffs in either 2022 or 2023.
Surya has been the Gryphons as the offensive coordinator throughout Sheahan’s tenure. He had previously held the same position with the Toronto Varsity Blues and Laurier Golden Hawks, winning the OUA championship in 2016, a year after the Gryphons last won it.
“When I started at Laurier, I think coach (Michael) Faulds might have just turned 30 and I was an OC at 24 and when you're that young you don't realize how young that really is,” Surya said.
One of Surya’s first jobs will be to fill out his coaching staff. Defensive co-ordinator Dennis McPhee and the Gryphons parted ways at the end of November. Special teams coordinator Donnavan Carter remains with the squad.
“As long as Donnavan doesn't get to be a head coach somewhere as obviously there's a lot of options open for him, but he's so integral to what we do from a player relationship standpoint from all these things behind the stage from no matter what his role is, and we're still sorting that out, he's going to be a part of the program,” Surya said.
It also has to be decided whether Surya will keep the offensive coordinator duties.
“It's all under review right now,” Surya said. “The offence will stay the same in terms of the structure, how we call things and how we do certain things because it's really important to me that (quarterbacks) Tristan (Aboud), Marshall (McCray) and anybody who's in the program now has that continuity. If we were to add anybody, they'd have to join that structure.
"I always liken it to the Nick Saban setup at Alabama. It doesn't matter who comes in there to call the offence, they use a very similar verbiage so anybody who is there, they don't have that uphill climb to learn a brand new offence and all those things. We're going to keep that the exact same and anybody we add will have to join and add to the offence from their own slant, their own style, but it will still be within the structure of what we have now.”
While a coaching change usually affects the team’s recruiting, that likely won’t be the case with the Gryphons since they’ve promoted from within.
“I was the lead over recruiting since I've been here, so it's a little bit of a weird situation where there's no drop-off on any of the recruiting side because I was the one – Ryan empowered me to lead that side of the organization,” Surya said.
“I don't have to worry about coming in with a new list. We've identified guys now almost 20 months in advance. It's a lot more like the (United) States now where you know a couple of years (in advance) in terms of who you want and what you need. It's about as smooth a transition as it can be, as weird as it is to say.”
It’ll be a smooth transition with everyone already involved with the program.
“It's one of those things where I already have the relationships in place with some of the key people associated with the program and I've gotten a five-year head start on creating those really important relationships and knowing the people,” Surya said. “Now I feel like, just in the first three days, I've heard from all the different alumni and support groups that are all excited about the next chapter of Gryphon football so I'm really lucky that way.
“All the (players) have asked me what's going to change. I say, 'Guys, nothing's going to change. You're going to show up Jan. 8, coach (Alex) Charette's going to be here as your strength and conditioning coach. He's going to run you through the workouts. For the first six weeks, we're going to grind in the gym, so nothing's going to change.'”
The Gryphons will continue to try to keep the top talent in the local District 10 high school football league playing at their home university.
“I think you've seen a bigger emphasis on keeping the best players local,” Surya said. “We made a conscious choice about two or three years ago that anybody who's here that's great in football in Guelph, we want to keep them here.”
The Gryphons had 14 former D10 players on their roster in the 2023 season.
“In order for us to have a strong university team, we need to have strong roots in football locally. We really feel like that's a responsibility for us as coaches to grow the game in the area.”
