Jim Solomon figured in the lives of students, athletes and their parents at Firelands High School for two generations.
After 37 years as a science teacher, three-sport coach and athletic director — and a 40-year career overall — Solomon is retiring. First on his leisure-time itinerary: salmon fishing in Alaska with his wife, Karen.
“I love to fish, so we’re going to head up there,” he said. “We’ll probably go down to Florida to my son’s and do a little deep-sea fishing, and my wife and I fool around with antiques a little bit. That should keep us busy for a while.”
Solomon is a graduate of Mayfield Heights High, where he played baseball with former major leaguer Sal Bando, and Ohio State. He was a football walk-on at Ohio State until he broke his ankle, which he said is lucky for him. After OSU, he spent three years teaching at St. Albert the Great in North Royalton.
Then in 1971 he heard about a teaching and assistant football coaching opportunity at Firelands. He took it and launched a career in which he served as athletic director and wrestling coach from 1985-2000, softball coach from 1990-2004 and as a football coach at various levels for six seasons.
He remembers becoming the Falcons’ head football coach.
“I inherited a 21-game winning streak from Vern Long and promptly broke it when we ran into a 10-0 Wellington team,” Solomon said.
“At one time, I was athletic director and coaching two sports,” he said. “Believe me, I couldn’t have done it without Karen’s support. Firelands teams won 58 conference championships in those years, and all of our sports were respectable.”
Solomon sat down on a recent Friday afternoon to reflect on his decades with the Falcons.
“There were just so many good kids I had the opportunity to work with,” he said. “I still see them and they still come around. I’ve coached with great people and when I was AD, the staff I had knew how difficult the job was. They worked so well to help out and it all worked. I think when you came to Firelands, you knew you were going to be treated first-class.”
Despite limited personal experience, Solomon started the wrestling program at Firelands.
“I only wrestled one year (in high school) because we had just started the program,” he said. “But John Churchhill, who wrestled at Vermilion, helped me begin the program here. We took that program and in two years won a conference championship. That was a testimony to John, the hard work and the kids we had. In that sport, you have to take lumps before you have any success. We just had real solid teams from then on.
“I remember one time we went to a tournament at Buckeye. It was one of those freezing, cold winter nights. I think we had one kid place and we were there till midnight with one kid.
“Well, we went out to get on the bus and the bus wouldn’t start, it was all frozen up. So John Churchhill gets a wrench and he’s under there pounding on some part, and the bus driver’s saying, ‘No, no, no!’ But he kept pounding and he finally said, ‘Try it now,’ and vrooooom, vroooom, it started up. John said, ‘OK, let’s get out of here.’”
Solomon is remembered more recently as the Falcons’ head softball coach.
“The softball,” said Solomon, “I just had such wonderful girls, especially the last few years. I think our team average grade-wise was like 3.8 the last four years. They’re all very successful young ladies now.”
His Falcons had some memorable games with Keystone, perennial power in the old Lorain County Conference, a strong softball conference in those days. After the Wildcats posted a 33-0 record in 1999, Solomon often said, “To win the Lorain County Conference, you have to be good enough to win the state championship.”
“You remember those old Keystone-Firelands games and how everybody just played their hearts out,” he said. “But at the end of the game, everybody shook hands. There was no animosity one way or the other, you know, ‘Hey, you beat us, but it was a great game.’ That’s the way it should be.”
Solomon remembers — as do hundreds of others who were there — a big game with Keystone in 2000. It attracted nearly 800 spectators whose cars and trucks filled two parking lots at Penfield Community Park, a church lot on the other side of state Route 18 and were parked alongside the highway for a quarter-mile in both directions.
Keystone won it 1-0 on a walk-off home run by a freshman third baseman named Brittney Robinson, who became an All-Ohio pitcher. That game might have been the most anticipated, well-attended and today the most talked about in the history of Lorain County softball.
But another game with Keystone is more memorable to Solomon.
“As good as Brittney was, we actually beat her a couple of times,” he said. “But that little girl they had that won the state championship (Kristie Malinkey), she turned in one of the most impressive pitching jobs I ever saw.
“We had the bases loaded, it was 0-0, and they had started another pitcher, I forget who just now. There was one out and I had my big hitters up. It was the sixth or seventh inning and I was thinking we put a couple runs up and it’s over. But Malinkey came in and struck out my two best hitters. Cold. I was impressed by that.”
Solomon said he has seen many changes in high school sports over the years, not all of them positive.
“I think what I see now is we’ve gotten away from building character,” he said. “I always thought a coach’s first job, of course, was to win. But also the kind of people you make is very, very important. I learned that, yeah, winning’s great, but the product, what the kids carry out of your program is much more important than just winning and losing.
“I see us getting away from that in sports. It’s not every case, but you see some young coaches who are just out to get some wins so they can move up to a better job. You know, whatever it takes, whether it’s morally right or wrong. And the older coaches, the old-school coaches, good professional guys, are getting out now.”
The Solomons have three children, Justin, who’s with the Florida fish and game commission; B.J., who coaches at Keystone, and Stacey in Philadelphia. They would like to receive reminiscences from former students and athletes. They can be mailed to the family at P.O. Box 149, Green Road, Birmingham, 44816.
 

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