Chad Isaly coached his final eighth-grade football game on Oct. 1, ending his 34-season football coaching career.
Isaly, a health and physical education teacher at Grizzell Middle School, has coached eighth-grade football at the school every season since it opened in 1994. He joined the district a year earlier at Sells Middle School. He plans to retire from education at the end of this school year, according to the district's "Powered by People" profile published Tuesday, Oct. 6.
His final game carried a storyline no one could have scripted. On the opposite sideline stood Brady Quinn, the Dublin Coffman graduate who quarterbacked Notre Dame and won the Maxwell Award. Quinn went 22nd overall to the Cleveland Browns in the 2007 NFL Draft. He is now a volunteer football coach at Eversole Run Middle School. His team edged Grizzell 14-12.
Quinn played for Isaly at Grizzell, and his squad went undefeated that season. He said Isaly was a major reason he moved back to Dublin and began coaching.
"When I moved back to Dublin, Chad Isaly was one of the reasons why," Quinn said in the district profile. "He and people like him have poured parts of their lives into the community."
Quinn said the foundation Dublin coaches built shaped everything that followed in his career. He described Isaly's teams as physical and fun, and said coaching at the middle school level matters because it reaches players at a formative age. He called the experience a debt he could never repay, only pay forward.
Isaly said he had been asked to coach at the high school level over the years but preferred to remain with eighth graders. The eighth-grade sideline was where he wanted to be.
He said many of the coaches he worked alongside were former high school head coaches who came down to the middle school level because they enjoyed it. Three decades of Grizzell team photos all feature the same coach.
Isaly said he feels great about ending on his own terms and called it a great ride. His retirement takes effect at the end of the 2026-27 school year.
