In the past six months, Pueblo High School assistant principal Frank Rosthenhausler has changed the local template for hiring head coaches.
Last week, he selected Kelvin Eafon, a two-sport athlete at Arizona, to coach the Warriors basketball team. A few months earlier he chose ex-UA safety Brandon Sanders to coach Pueblo’s football team.
Given the UA’s high profile in Tucson sports, it’s difficult to believe that Pueblo’s hiring of Sanders and Eafon are virtually unprecedented.
Sanders was captain of the UA’s 1995 football team and twice an All-Pac-10 first-team safety. Eafon, who initially played basketball at Arizona from 1994-96 (he played in 31 games as a reserve guard), was the captain of Arizona’s 12-1 football team in 1998, a fullback with a big voice and big heart who scored 16 touchdowns that year.
Sanders and Eafon both were inspirational leaders of their UA football teams. Both seemed destined, someday, to be coaches. Sanders kicked around at several local high schools and at Pima College; Eafon has mostly coached youth groups and given private basketball instruction.
The last time a Tucson school hired a former UA team captain was when 1960s football lineman Howard Breinig became one of the state’s top football coaches at Sahuaro from 1983 to 1994.
Before that, it was the late ’50s, when basketball standout Ed Nymeyer went on to become a Hall of Fame coach at Flowing Wells. Before that, it was 1944 UA basketball captain George Genung, who coached so well at Amphitheater that the school’s gymnasium now bears his name.
It’s not that capable UA athletes haven’t given high school coaching a try here. All-Border Conference lineman Ed Brown became an institution at Cholla. Tony Morales coached Tucson High to a pair of state basketball championships in the ’60s.
UA football player Paul Schmidt was the head coach at Mountain View and Marana; Pueblo hired ex-UA football standouts Larry McKee, Adrian Koch and Don Bowerman. Salpointe’s football team was coached in the early ’70s by ex-UA lineman Jerry Davitch.
UA football starters Sam Giangardella, at Sunnyside; John Kaiser, at Catalina; and Vincent Smith, at Tucson, coached briefly before moving on.
Sahuaro’s Scott McKee and Mountain View’s Clarence McRae, both of who lettered at Arizona over the last 15 seasons, are doing well in rebuilding situations.
But never have two prominent ex-Wildcats —team captains — coached simultaneously at the same school, both running their own program.
It’s not going to be easy. Eafon takes over a basketball program that was 1-26 two years ago. Sanders is coaching a football program that hasn’t had a winning season since 2002.
