Well, Ameritime Sports, The Control Option Company and all associated companies within Ameritime’s Integrated Financial Network® are pleased to provide that information to our readers with a series of verbal portraits featuring some of the most iconic local sports figures in the area. Our next installment highlights Don Boulware, a renowned Football Coach, educator and family man… but there is more to this enticing story.
Coach Boulware, 68, grew up on a small farm in Callaway County, Missouri. His time in Callaway County was characterized by athletics, where he ran track and played basketball and football. Thanks to his early start with the game, football would be the sport that he stuck with long-term.
“I would go to watch my older brother play sports — I was three years younger — and the coach would say, ‘Get in here!’” Boulware said. “I’d practice with him sometimes, [and] because of that, I got to start playing Junior High sports a year early.”
“When I was a sixth grader playing with the seventh and eighth graders in Junior High football, we were playing a team and they were running all over us. They had this great big halfback and I didn’t know whether I was going to try to tackle him or not, but there were a bunch of cheerleaders and I didn’t want to look bad in front of them. The coach always said, ‘Go in low, you can tackle bigger guys if you go in hitting low.’ I trusted what he told me, did what we practiced, knocked the wind out of him, and the cheerleaders went nuts. I thought, ‘This is pretty cool.’ So, I was hooked on football right then and there.”
Playing running back and defensive back at North Callaway High School, Boulware would win most valuable player on the Sophomore team, earn All-District honors as a Junior, and although he was hurt much of his Senior year, he would still walk on and play one year at Northeast Missouri State( now Truman State).
With coaching aspirations, Boulware opted to major in physical education, while minoring in health and journalism.
“I thought, ‘Well if I’m going to coach, I need to play in college,’” Boulware said. “I was Division Two, and I didn’t realize that even playing Division Two, it’s not like playing on your high school team — it’s a big step up. I just [played] the one year and I’m glad I did; I’ve got so many lifelong friends from [Truman].”
After graduating college, Boulware kickstarted his extensive coaching career at Centralia High School — where he had student taught during his Senior year of college — as an Assistant Freshman Coach. When Mark Benson, one of those “lifelong friends from[Truman],” was enlisted as head coach at Valle Catholic High School, Boulware followed, joining Benson in Sainte Genevieve as an Assistant Football Coach and Head Track and Field Coach.
“Mark Benson called me up and wanted to know if I would come there and coach with him, so I went from being an Assistant Freshman Coach to Defensive Coordinator and Offensive Line Coach,” Boulware said. “We had a three-man [coaching] staff at Valle Catholic, and Mark built this tremendous program there. I was with him during the beginning stages of that. I had a very good background in fundamentals, and that really helped me start out in coaching… but it’s really about teaching communication, building relationships with the kids and earning their trust.”
“It doesn’t matter what the coach knows, it’s how much the kids know. We had to take what we knew and communicate it in a way that they could grasp it, [and] my last year at Valle was the year before the State Championship, so [things] were picking up. [Because of what we did at Valle], we actually won a Conference Title and we made the playoffs for the very first time in school history.”
Recommended by a rival coach, Boulware received a call from the superintendent at Santa Fe in Alma, Missouri, which lead to his first head coaching job in football.
“A football coach from another school who also coached track thought I was a good guy, a good young coach, and he had actually played football with the superintendent back in the day,” Boulware said. “When you’re at a track meet for four or five hours talking to your opponent’s coaches, and you develop friendships, you learn their personalities, you learn networking. I think communication and networking are some of the biggest keys in life. That [aforementioned] coach told the superintendent, ‘Hey, here’s the guy you’ve got to hire.'”
After “a couple of pretty good seasons” at Santa Fe, Boulware was asked by their cross-town rival Ste. Genevieve High School to apply and “surprisingly to [him]” ended up getting the job, operating alongside Offensive Line Coach and Defensive Coordinator, Bob Stolzer.
Boulware and Stolzer “worked together very well for six straight years there,” making the playoffs for the first time in the school’s history and making the playoffs three times out of Boulware’s last four years at Ste. Genevieve.
Boulware then took an Offensive Coordinator position in football and a Head Coaching position in track “on a whim” at a small college in Ottawa, Kansas for three years, getting his Master’s in Athletic Administration and meeting his wife, Anna, in the process. For his second and third years at Ottawa University, Boulware added on the duties of Athletic Director. However, realizing that he “was actually happier and had more free time” when he was coaching high school sports, Boulware began looking to transition back from college athletics.
“I applied to five or six different schools, and the one that ended up being the most appealing to me was one up in Iowa,” Boulware said. “I’d heard about [Southern Cal High School] from another coaching friend who I’d met down in Missouri. He said it was a great school… I was there for nine years.”
During his time at Santa Fe, Ste. Genevieve and Southern Cal, Boulware assembled a 110-62 career record. At Southern Cal, specifically, he held a 66-24 record, qualified for the playoffs three times and then won the Class 1A Iowa State Championship in 2000. After the 2000-01 school year, Boulware stepped away from coaching altogether to become a Missouri-based sales representative for The Graphic Edge, selling team uniforms and other sports apparel.
“I ordered all my uniforms and apparel from a guy at a small company called The Graphic Edge, and he had been trying to recruit me for a couple of years; he didn’t have a presence in Missouri, and he knew I was from Missouri,” Boulware said. “He told me, ‘You don’t have any sales experience, but I know you. I’m giving you an opportunity here to make a life for yourself where you’re making more money and you’re going to have more time with [your] young kids and you’re going to be back in your home area. This opportunity is here right now, but next year or down the road, it might not be. I really think you should take it.’ And that’s the last thing he said about it. Up until that moment, I didn’t think I was going to do it, but something about that last statement he said resonated with me.”
Boulware worked as a sales representative in Missouri for 18 years. During that time, he was able to coach his children in youth sports and “watch them as they got through high school and through college.” Boulware retained his love for sports, however, and yearned for a chance to return.
The opportunity to do so came to him in 2018 when he coached the Freshman Football team at Troy Buchanan High School while still working for The Graphic Edge. After two years of coaching in Troy, Boulware retired from sales and, at age 65, found himself in yet another Head Coaching position. This time would be personal for Boulware; for this role, he would be returning to his alma mater.
“It just brought me back,” Boulware said. “I’ve always said that being a player is the best experience you can have in any sport, but being a coach is a pretty close second. You’re there, you’re in the action, you’re around the players, you’re involved in the decisions, the strategy and in some ways it’s better — you don’t have to do all the grunt work!”
Coaching at North Callaway helped Boulware “reconnect with his roots,” along with family that was still in the area: his father — 103 years old and in the veterans home —, and his brother, who was battling cancer at the time.
“Your family impacts your life decisions all the time as a coach, but you’re also gone away from your family a lot,” Boulware said. “I got to [reconnect] with my home base, which I’d basically been away from since age 21. If I didn’t have the support of my wife, or my brother or my dad pulling me back to Callaway County, I probably wouldn’t have done it.”
Boulware finished his last two seasons at North Callaway with a record of 7-3 both years, moving on to volunteer as a Football Coach back at Troy, and settling into retirement with the help of Benson and his company, Ameritime.
“Mark is a mentor and a lifelong friend; he’s just a really good person and over the years he would meet with us and review our financial situation and it just kept getting better and better and better,” Boulware said. “Then he started talking about Ameritime and [us] doing our own banking system. I knew him, I trusted him, and I saw the results of the advice he was giving. Over the years [our finances] just mushroomed and multiplied, so I have no qualms about recommending Ameritime to any of my friends or people I just met.”
In addition to volunteering in the fall as a football coach at Troy, and spending time with his wife and kids, Boulware also works with Ameritme himself in a series dubbed ‘Boulware’s Breakdown,’ where Boulware puts his journalism minor, sports knowledge and communication skills to the test by conducting interviews with coaches and players alike in video format on the Ameritime Sports website.
Feeling “secure and fulfilled” with his finances and in life, Boulware has found his achievements culminating in his recent induction into the St. Louis Metropolitan Football Coaches Association (SLMFCA) Hall of Fame, a feat that he credits mostly to networking and “knowing the right people.”
Being a lifelong learner and communicator himself, Boulware believes that the ideal candidate for Ameritime is someone who is coachable and willing to try the Control Option Mindset.
“I’m retired, but [my wife and I] seem to be more comfortable than ever; we have money that’s rolling and it’s going tax-free, and it’s there when we need it and there when we don’t,” Boulware said. “We didn’t make more money than a lot of people, we’re just smarter with the way we use it. We got all my kids to college on a teacher’s and a salesman’s salary. People have to be coachable to do this, [and] if they’re not coachable, if they have a built-in mistrust or doubt, they’re not going to listen. Some people think this is too good to be true, this doesn’t make sense, there’s got to be a catch to this, but if you get past that and listen, the Control Option Mindset can really help you.”
Indeed it can, and Boulware is living, breathing proof of that.
Football, and sports in general, put Boulware on the path that led to Ameritime and all of its additional arms and legs. It was a game-changer for him, just like he has been to so many others throughout his illustrious career.
Learn more about strength and stability that Coach Boulware has experienced through Ameritime and The Control Option® by visiting any of the helpful sites regarding the services we provide at:
Thecontroloptionmindset.com
Ameritime.net
StrategicTax365.com
IESeducates.com
Sports is an incredible journey, but life doesn’t end there. Reach out to those who know.