It was in the small Midwestern town of Ottumwa, Iowa that Chris Ash started on a path that led him to become a head football coach in the Big Ten.

While growing up in the town of 25,000 people, Ash had no idea that football would eventually be a major part of his life.

His two brothers and one sister were not involved in athletics, but that did not prevent Ash from starting out in youth football as a fourth grader.

Football consumed a portion of his time as a boy, but the real world swooped in and hit Ash earlier than most teenagers.

“I didn’t come from a family with really much of anything,” Ash said. “My dad was an elementary school janitor and my mom worked as a grocery store clerk. My parents got divorced when I was in middle school and after they got divorced, I honestly worked to make any money and take care of myself. In the summer, I had two different paper routes. I washed dishes at a restaurant. I stacked groceries, I mowed lawns. I did a little bit of everything to try and make some money.”

All the while, football remained a part of Ash’s life.

“It was the social thing to do,” Ash said. “There were not many other things to do there. You were either involved in athletics or you got into trouble. I did a little bit of both.”

Trouble managed to find Ash again during his junior year of high school and that put him at a bit of a crossroads.

“I made a poor decision and got suspended for three games. That kind of woke me up,” Ash said. “I had been driving my grandparents’ car without a license. I had gotten a few tickets. They took the car away. At that point, I kind of made a change. I was not perfect by any means from there. But I realized it was a time in my life that I had to make better decisions.”

One of those decisions was to somehow, some way, continue his academic career.

“My dad wanted me to go work at a meat-packing plant in town,” Ash said. “But I made the decision to go to college.”

Paying for college would be another uphill battle altogether.

“There were no scholarships being given out at the time at the program I went to, Drake University. So I had to find a way to pay for that,” Ash said. “I somehow got connected in the recreation services department there at Drake. I kind of worked myself into positions of leadership at rec services and worked with the facilities people there. I made money there during the school year.”