Corpus Christi Caller Times Caller.com - New Flour Bluff football coach ready for action

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Saturday, January 27, 2001

New Flour Bluff football coach ready for action
Ex-Midwestern State University assistant intends to implement attacking style gameplan to Hornets
By George Vondracek
Caller-Times

Garfield

All it took was a little nudge from Rhudy Maskew to ignite Jim Garfield's motor and send him to the Gulf Coast.
   Maskew, the former Flour Bluff High School assistant football coach in his second year at Wichita Falls Rider, urged Garfield to apply for the vacancy at the Bluff once it was posted.
   Mere weeks later, Garfield finds himself with his first head-coaching position as Mike Crowe's successor at the Bluff.
   "He was really the one who lit my fire to be a head coach and showed me the way," Garfield said Friday. "We had talked early in the year about looking at some head (coaching) jobs but I wasn't really exploring much. But when the opening came, he got me fired up about it. He told me, 'You need to go after this.' "
   Garfield, 37, was picked by the Flour Bluff Independent School District board late Thursday night to succeed Crowe. After three seasons, Crowe stepped aside to assume full-time athletics director responsibilities.
   Formerly Rider's defensive coordinator, Garfield tentatively is scheduled to begin work at the Bluff next Thursday, pending the expediency of his departure from Wichita Falls. His annual salary will be $50,000.
   While it was Maskew - he served as an assistant to Crowe during the 1998 season - who turned him on to the Bluff, Garfield said it was the players' talent he saw, the support from the administration and the lure of continuing a winning program that sealed matters for him.

Jim Garfield file

AGE: 37
POSITION: Flour Bluff head football coach (first head-coaching position)
PREVIOUS JOBS: Assistant coach at Wichita Falls Rider, El Paso Soccorro, Midwestern State University and Eastern New Mexico University
WIFE: Becky (13 years)
CHILDREN: Tyson (12), Sarah (5), Anna (2)

   "He's laid a great foundation," Garfield said of Crowe. "The first time in the playoffs in 18 years, first playoff win in school history. I mean, I've got my work cut out for me. I've got to keep going what coach Crowe has started."
   The Hornets finished third in District 31-4A, earning their first postseason trip since 1982. They defeated Edcouch-Elsa, 28-7, before falling in the Division II area round to eventual regional finalist Rockport-Fulton.
   "But I think it's going to take a tremendous amount of work to keep it going," Garfield said. "We need to keep going with the motivation. We have to stay on the cutting edge to continue this."
   Aggressive style
   To that end, the Ogden, Utah, native said he plans for the Hornets to implement an attacking style on offense, defense and special teams.
   "I don't like to sit and wait for things to come to me," Garfield said. "I like to go after what we need to do and disrupt the timing of our opponents."
   Garfield coached two years under Maskew at Rider, which reached the area round of the Division I Class 4A playoffs last season. Previously, Garfield had stops as an assistant at El Paso Soccoro, Midwestern State University in Wichita Falls and Eastern New Mexico.
   An all-conference offensive lineman at Snow Junior College in Utah and at ENMU, Garfield played on Ogden Bonneville's state championship team in 1980.
   Garfield said the experience he has gained during the last few years and the timing of the Bluff opening spurred him to seek his first head-coaching job.
   "This is the time for me," he said. "I've got 15 years of coaching football and I want to try some of the things I've learned to see if they're going to work."
   Garfield was one of seven finalists for the position. Crowe said there were 117 applications for the position and a selection committee trimmed the list to 30, from which the seven were interviewed.
   "I think what coach Garfield had going for him was his motivation and his tremendous enthusiasm he has for working with kids," Crowe said.


Staff writer George Vondracek can be reached at 886-3731 or by e-mail at vondracekg@caller.com

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