Ron Gladnick, '83 | Alumni Award Recipient

PatriotMan
Published on Nov 10, 2021
“I don’t care what kind of environment you put me in, I am going to learn and then I’m going to become confident and then I’m going to compete.” -- Ron Gladnick, '83

Ron Gladnick is the head football coach at Torrey Pines High School in San Diego, California, and former CEO of Apical Industries, a manufacturer of helicopter floatation systems. A defensive lineman for the Chargers, Gladnick played on the 1980 and 1982 GLIAC Championship teams and was named All-American. He was inducted into the Hillsdale College Athletic Hall of Fame in 2008. Gladnick coached defensive line for the Chargers and worked in the College’s Corporate Development Office before moving to San Diego in 1991. There he established Apical Industries, which grew to more than 500 employees in seven facilities, producing 90 percent of the market share of helicopter floatation systems. In 2007, DART Helicopter Services acquired Apical Industries. Gladnick sold his interest in the company in 2011 but continues to work as a partner in two aviation parts companies.

Since 2014, Gladnick has served as head football coach at Torrey Pines High School, turning a struggling program into a championship team. In 2021, Gladnick helped organize and lead a successful grassroots campaign, Let Them Play CA, to resume youth sports competition in California, which had been suspended due to COVID-19. Ron is married to Joanna, and he has two daughters.

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Hillsdale College is an independent institution of higher learning founded in 1844 by men and women “grateful to God for the inestimable blessings” resulting from civil and religious liberty and “believing that the diffusion of learning is essential to the perpetuity of these blessings.” It pursues the stated object of the founders: “to furnish all persons who wish, irrespective of nation, color, or sex, a literary, scientific, [and] theological education” outstanding among American colleges “and to combine with this such moral and social instruction as will best develop the minds and improve the hearts of its pupils.” As a nonsectarian Christian institution, Hillsdale College maintains “by precept and example” the immemorial teachings and practices of the Christian faith.

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By training the young in the liberal arts, Hillsdale College prepares students to become leaders worthy of that legacy. By encouraging the scholarship of its faculty, it contributes to the preservation of that legacy for future generations. By publicly defending that legacy, it enlists the aid of other friends of free civilization and thus secures the conditions of its own survival and independence.