A second chance.
That’s how Ian Rapanick views his newest — and former — job.
Rapanick is the newest head football coach at Perquimans, five years after spending one year in the same job.
“It’s been a blessing to our family that we’ve been given another opportunity to come back here and be in a place that we truly love,” Rapanick said.
Rapanick was hired as Perquimans’ varsity head coach in 2017 and the results on the field proved to be rough in his first year ever as a head coach.
The Pirates went 2-9 that season, their worst year since an 0-11 campaign in 2012.
Perquimans started out 2017 with an 0-5 record before handling Mattamuskeet 49-2 and beating Camden 52-36 a month after that. At the time, it was the program’s first win over Camden in seven years.
Rapanick was hired for the Pirates' head coaching job at age 23. Looking back on it, he says he didn’t approach the job the right way.
“I honestly was thinking that I was a coach first and teacher second,” Rapanick said. “When you talk to anybody, that’s obviously a recipe for disaster.”
In May 2018, a year after he was hired, Rapanick stepped down as the head coach and moved to Virginia, where both and his wife have family.
He found himself back on the sideline the following fall as an assistant coach at Nansemond-Suffolk Academy in Virginia. The Saints posted a 7-4 record in the 2018 season.
After that, Rapanick moved on to Norview High School where the former high school offensive lineman was tabbed as the offensive line coach.
After one season, he was promoted to the head coach of the Pilots. In spring 2021, a season after a 2-8 finish, Rapanick led the Pilots to three wins in five games in the pandemic-shortened season.
Last year, the Old Dominion graduate, who worked his way into coaching after a stint as an assistant in the ODU football program equipment room, posted a 5-5 record and a tight, 12-6 first-round playoff loss.
One of those wins was the closest he had come to Perquimans since he left. Norview visited John A. Holmes in Edenton and left with a 28-22 victory in overtime.
There, Rapanick acknowledged, many members of the Perquimans community came out to support him.
“Being able to see everybody and talking to those people again pregame, it really made us miss this place even more because it’s so special,” he said. “It was very, very special to see all those people and realize they still love my family just as much as they did before.”
In his five years away from Perquimans, Rapanick said he’s grown up a lot when it comes to both coaching and teaching. Building relationships with students of all different backgrounds is something that he says he takes pride in.
Now, he takes on the role of trying to continue the success Perquimans football has enjoyed lately.
Under Randy Awrey, who replaced Rapanick at Perquimans in 2018 and recently retired, the Pirates have gone from 1-10 in Awrey’s first year to an 8-3 record in 2021 with a third straight playoff appearance.
Rapanick said it was an easy decision for him to approach Perquimans and ask if the district was interested in rehiring him as head football coach.
“My wife and I talked about it when we found out the job was coming open. We really wanted the opportunity to come back and get back in this community,” Rapanick said. “It’s been a lot of fun.”
