Sports Texoma

 The school of fish that wriggled into the opening of head football coach and athletic director at Sherman High School turned out to be quite an assorted netful.

The Sherman Independent School District search committee cast far and wide into the water. They didn’t get quite the sizeable haul they were hoping for, but they got a huge variety of non-Texas invaders — and a few prize catches.

You had the usual long-distance swimmers: multiple entrants into whatever job opening happens to appear in the Lone Star State. You got northern pike from Wisconsin and Illinois, trout from New York, and good ol’ catfish from Oklahoma and Louisiana.

You also got the “little salmon that could” ... coaches from small schools raring back and taking a mighty leap at the rapids to land that plum gig.

And, of course, you got a decent sample of the native species. But for a prime football “honey hole” like Texomaland is, it was a long day in the boat for superintendent Dr. Al Hambrick and company.

Fortunately, a king-sized lunker jumped out of the water and landed smack-dab in Hambrick’s lap.

Among the 31 applicants for the job, Gary Kinne’s coaching credentials proved more enticing than the others.

Kinne steered Clovis West as far as it could go last year in the California sectional playoffs (a system that this Texan will never grasp). That was after a couple of years as linebackers coach at Baylor, his alma mater.

Before that, in only three years, Kinne took a Canton team with one playoff win in 74 seasons of football history and quintupled that total. He helped Mesquite High win a state championship in Class 5A in 2001 as defensive coordinator.

But the more important thing for Sherman fans may be that Kinne, championed from the get-go by a vocal number of supporters, has Bearcat Nation buzzing for the first time in half a decade.

“We wanted someone who had athletic leadership and experience serving as an athletic director,” Hambrick said at Tuesday night’s school board meeting. “We wanted someone with head coaching experience, but beyond that, we were looking for a person with a history of proven success, and we felt Coach Kinne met our criteria.”

The list of applicants was requested by the Herald Democrat under the Texas Public Information Act, Chapter 552, Texas Government Code, which guarantees the public’s access to information in the custody of governmental agencies.

The coaches who applied for the job are notable for where they are from. Coaches applied from Wisconsin, Missouri, Illinois, Florida, California and New York as well as Oklahoma, Louisiana, New Mexico and, of course, Texas.

Kinne’s one-year probationary contract, rather than a standard three-year deal, brings him in line with the rest of Sherman’s staff, which he said he plans to retain.

Two of those, defensive coordinator Jason Heath and offensive coordinator Royce Slechta, made the finalist list for the job. 

In addition to Heath and Slechta, local applicants included:

n Callisburg’s Jerry Bomar, a Sherman native who made the finalist list for the second time in six years; 

n  Darren Anderson, the former Tom Bean head coach and Whitewright assistant who is now offensive line coach at 3A Division I state champion Prosper;

n  Andrew Cellars, who is the assistant principal at Anna High School; and

n  Al Penn-White, a Sherman native and a veteran NFL, USFL and NFL Europe quarterback.

Of 31 applications sent in, only 18 were from coaches who worked in Texas this past school year and outside the Sherman ISD. 

The low number of in-state applicants for the job is surprising.

Part of that is because of Sherman’s application process, which appears quite complex. And part of it is also the lateness of the job opening during the offseason.

But Sherman also has a reputation among the Texas coaching fraternity for not paying coaches as well as other similarly-sized schools.

That didn’t stop Kinne from returning to his home state, and to the area where his wife is from. And it didn’t stop  the Sherman board of trustees from approving him unanimously.

The SISD board had a tough job to do. They had to hire a quality replacement for Drew Young, and had a maximum of nine weeks to do it. 

And they had to avoid the embarrassing meltdown of six years before in the wake of Ronnie Tipps’ departure that cost the school time, money and face.

They accomplished all of the above with four weeks to spare.

Unhook yourselves from the rear-view mirror, all you overreactive Bearcatters. There is plenty to be positive about and plenty to look forward to.

Gary Kinne is quite a trophy fish that SISD reeled in. Given the time, he’ll reel in the wins soon enough. Now is the time for an angler’s patience.