Ashlyn Register is an ASU Cronkite School of Journalism student assigned to cover Centennial High School for AZPreps365.com

 

For coach Richard Taylor, it was a “marriage made in heaven” when Steve Isaac joined Centennial’s football team as the special teams coordinator and safeties coach in the spring of 2012.

Since then, Centennial has been to five straight state championships games, winning four.

But state championships are nothing new to Isaac.

Since starting coaching in 1988 at Phoenix Christian, Isaac has won seven state championships. But he almost stopped after three.  

“I was kind of tired,” Isaac said. “I think I was going to retire, so I talked to my wife and said okay I’m done.”

But Isaac wasn’t done when he received a phone call from Taylor in 2012 asking him to come to Centennial. Isaac went down to the first spring practice that year and has been at Centennial ever since.

“He sees the big picture,” Taylor said. “He is very meticulous and very detailed person and that is what you need in the secondary, especially also on special teams.”

Isaac has coached at Phoenix Christian, Desert Vista and Centennial over his 30 years in the business. Out of his seven state championships, two have stuck out to him.

In 1999, he won a state championship with Phoenix Christian. Seven players received large scholarships from Division 1, Division 1A and Division 2 schools. For Isaac, this was huge for a small 2A school.

The other championship was in 2015 with Centennial.

“They made a super division of 16 teams. We were one of the smaller schools that were put into that division,” Isaac said. “The press and everyone were saying, ‘We will see how Centennial does now that they have to play the big schools every week.’”

In the playoffs, Centennial knocked off three No.1 ranked teams to go onto to win the state championship against Desert Ridge 28-6. Isaac even reminisced about the fake-punt for 62-yards from the 12-yard line.

On the 2015 state championship team, free safety Elijah Brooks’ brother was on the team.

“He knew my brother really well too, but with him I wasn’t David’s little brother, I was just Elijah,” Brooks said.

 Isaac brings a different perspective to the game. 

“With him winning seven state championships, I feel like it is different from a coach who wants his first,” Brooks said. “He has a different mojo because he has been there before, and he knows exactly what it takes to win.”

Alongside coaching football, Isaac is the pastor at Reunion Church. He formed the church with a small group of friends in 1999.

Isaac knows Centennial is a public high school, but he tries to live certain values he believes in on the football field.

“He realizes that this is a public school, and he knows you can’t preach here, but the ideas that he teaches on Sunday are all the ideals and ideas he teaches here during the week,” said Taylor.

This has also given him the opportunity to minister to hundreds of families over the 30 years of coaching, and he has done 32 weddings for former players.

Isaac loves the opportunity to invest into his players lives to see them grow into young men.

“I think that coaching young men gives me at least a small opportunity to be a part of that process, which I think is one of the most dynamic opportunities I have,” Isaac said.