Former Pickerington Central football coach Jay Sharrett earns Lifetime Achievement Award
Jay Sharrett was ready to close the book on more than three decades of coaching in late 2022, but he still was concerned about what would come next.
“You’ve been going at it seven days a week, 365 days a year for 35 years, especially the (previous) 20, but I’ve enjoyed this,” Sharrett said. “I told people (my wife) Lynda and I were going off the grid, and that’s pretty much what we’ve done.”
After a 20-year run as Pickerington Central football coach that saw Sharrett not only take the Tigers to new heights but make them arguably the state’s preeminent big-school program, Sharrett has spent the past year-plus relaxing, traveling and sleeping in whenever he pleases.
Having guided Central to two Division I state championships, eight regional titles and 17 league crowns, Sharrett will be honored with the Lifetime Achievement Award at the Central Ohio High School Sports Awards at 7 p.m. June 20 at Mershon Auditorium. Tickets can be purchased online.
“You sit back and take it in a little bit,” Sharrett, who was Central’s defensive coordinator for 10 years before becoming head coach in 2003, said of his legacy. He retired from teaching a few months after stepping down as coach.
The Sharretts stayed away from Central games by design last fall, instead traveling to see former Tigers play and coach in college and the NFL. They flew to England and Scotland in May with their youngest daughter, Emily.
“We got to do a lot of things we’ve never been able to do because we were always getting ready for the next game and the next season,” Jay Sharrett said.
Sharrett said he saw half of one Central game last year, a first-round playoff win over New Albany.
His former defensive coordinator, Jeff Lomonico, guided Central to eight wins and a Region 3 quarterfinal.
Central went 108-7 at home in Sharrett’s tenure and won state titles in 2017 and 2019. The Tigers were state runners-up in 2006, 2011 and 2020.
“All the coaches are his friends,” Lynda Sharrett said. “It’s been a change.”
“She’s adjusted,” Jay retorted. “It was tough at first.”
If not because Jay was home far more than at any point in their 34-year marriage, then for other reasons.
“I’d be late to the bank because he was sleeping,” said Lynda, a teller and supervisor at Fairfield Federal in Pickerington.
“I used to get up an hour before her,” Jay said. “Now I get up an hour after.”
The Sharretts already are planning to celebrate Thanksgiving in Nashville, Tennessee, with their older daughter, Megan. It used to be that on that fourth Thursday of November, Jay hoped the Tigers would be practicing.
They usually were.
Sharrett still roots for Central, just not necessarily in person.
“I wanted those guys to take that thing and run with it,” he said. “They’ve done a great job.”
This article originally appeared on The Columbus Dispatch: High school sports awards to honor Pickerington Central's Jay Sharrett
