Ashland University football's Victory Bell has been around for many Eagle ups and downs – mostly ups – over the last three decades.
It has been rung by senior Eagle football players 113 times after home wins since 1996 – 41 times at Community Stadium, and 72 times (and counting) at Jack Miller Stadium/Martinelli Field.
It has been rung following home NCAA Division II playoff victories, after hard-fought rivalry games, at the end of multiple overtimes and against programs which no longer exist.
And the bell sat idle in 2020 while the COVID-19 pandemic came and went.
All of this came about following a chance encounter former AU Vice President for Institutional Advancement and Eagle alum
Ralph Tomassi had on the golf course in July of 1996. During the Eagler golf outing at the now-Ashland Golf Club (formerly Ashland Country Club), Tomassi and then-Ashland Board of Trustees member
Robert "Bud" Ingmand were playing the 11
th hole, which has a cast-iron bell for golfers to ring to signal players behind them it is clear to hit their drives.
The light bulb in Tomassi's head went off.
"I said, 'If we had a bell like that, I would take it out to Community Stadium…put it on a post, paint it purple and gold, and I'd start a new tradition called the Victory Bell,'" he said.
Ingmand said he had an identical bell to the one at the course in his basement, and he donated it. Tomassi and his nephew,
Christian Kang, an incoming AU freshman at the time, picked up the bell.
That led to conversations between Tomassi, then-Eagle Athletic Director
Bill Weidner and then-Ashland head football coach
Gary Keller to decide whether to start a new tradition at the program's home at the time, Community Stadium. All agreed, and all that was needed was approval from the stadium's other tenant – Ashland High School.
Once that approval was acquired, the bell was installed at the stadium prior to the start of the 1996 football season. The bell sits on a pole made from wood retained from another of the Eagles' former venues, Redwood Stadium – a suggestion from the late former AU Vice President of Business Affairs,
Jim Barnes.
Ever since, for the last 30 years, the football team has gathered at the bell after home wins, singing the fight song and having seniors ring the bell in triumph.
"Tradition is Ashland football," said Eagle head coach
Doug Geiser. "It's a big part of what we do. We preach all the time that it's not about you, it's about those who have come before you and blazed that path.
"The victory bell being in Jack Miller Stadium ties together the two previous stadiums in our history. Every time the guys ring that, they realize it ties together all those generations of players, no matter where they played."
Said
Cameron Blair, a senior starting quarterback in 2025 and an offensive graduate assistant coach in 2026, "The seniors look forward to it. It's something you wait a long time to do. It gives people incentive to stay, as well, to be able to ring that bell, because of all the work you've put in before that."
"It's something special we can do for the seniors," Geiser said. "You always challenge to make that the best year of their football career anyway, and to know that you have to be a senior in order to ring it, it is something pretty special. It's a rite of passage, and it's definitely earned by those guys who get a chance to do it."
Thirty years after his brainchild came into being, Tomassi still enjoys seeing the tradition live on.
"Now that (College Football Hall of Fame) coach
(Dr. Fred) Martinelli's gone, and (former AU President)
Dr. (Glenn) Clayton's gone, and (former AU professor, administrator and board member)
Lucille Ford is gone," he said, "a lot of people don't know the historical part. You think about posterity, you think about passing on the tradition.
"I wanted to make sure the Victory Bell, this year at least, people understood that, at a small university, you can create tradition. You can't do that at Ohio State and those places. There's too many layers to go through to get something approved. But a regular guy, working in Development, can play golf, see a bell, go to a Board member, get something donated, bring it to the Athletic Director, take it to the football coach, and everybody at a place like Ashland would say, 'Great, let's do it.' Thirty years later, you've got a tradition that's meaningful."
