Tuesday, June 4, 1996

Gaines leaving is bad timing for Abilene High

By LANCE FLEMING
Sports Writer

Perhaps, in retrospect, we should have all seen this coming.

Why should Abilene have expected to keep Gary Gaines when he was the top candidate for every high school head coaching job in the state?

Why should this town, and more importantly, Abilene High, have expected a coach with a state championship at Odessa Permian on his resume to have shrugged off offers from more attractive places?

Why?

Because Gaines told us he would.

Gaines left Abilene High on Monday to become the new head football coach at San Angelo Central. And that's something that just five days ago he said he wouldn't do.

"I don't have any interest in the job," Gaines told the Reporter-News Thursday. "It's probably a good job and all that, but the timing doesn't appeal to me. Besides, we've got unfinished business here at Abilene High."

Gaines promised Abilene and Eagle fans two years ago when he was hired that he had always wanted to rebuild a program and watch it grow from loser to perennial powerhouse. He asked AHS fans to be patient as the Eagles went from learning how to walk to learning how to win.

Gaines said on the day he was hired - Jan. 12, 1994 - that this was a long-term deal he was looking at. The long term turned out to be two seasons.

"I don't think I grew impatient," Gaines said Monday night from a coaching clinic in Ruidoso, N.M. "I wasn't looking for a job. But I also don't think you should ever not talk to people when they want to talk to you. I think I displayed pretty good patience. I'm not a patient person by nature, but I don't think I ran out of it."

The job of finishing what Gaines started will now belong to Steve Warren, who was elevated from defensive coordinator to head coach Monday night. Warren is young and aggressive, will run a class program and, hopefully, keep the AHS program moving in the right direction.

But we shouldn't even be talking about this because the timing of this move stinks.

We're a little more than two months away from the start of summer practice and now the Eagles have lost more than a little bit of continuity.

"I'm sure this decision won't be received very well at all," Gaines said Monday. "I guess when you leave a place people are either happy because you got fired or sad because they liked what you were doing. I thought we made some improvements, and the kids did everything we wanted them to do. I know this won't be received very well by the community."

It certainly wasn't well-received by superintendent Charles Hundley, who issued a terse three-sentence statement saying that "(Gaines) began a good thing here. I am sorry he did not choose to bring it to fruition. And, of course, the timing of his resignation could not be worse for 1996 Abilene High football."

AISD athletic director Robert Starr was also disappointed in the decision.

"I don't know if betrayal is the right word," Starr said. "But I am disappointed that he wasn't here longer than he was. He was doing a good job. The attitude among the players and the parents was tremendous."

The disappointment was evident on the face of Abilene High principal Royce Curtis, who nonetheless said that he wished Gaines "all the success and good fortune in the world."

And what can be read into this decision?

If a man of Gaines' caliber - and make no mistake, he is a man of high morals and character - leaves Abilene High, what does that tell the rest of the coaching fraternity in the state?

Answer: If Gary Gaines can't win at Abilene High, why should I think I can?

The move puts the perception out among coaches that Abilene High football is dead and buried. And that's something that will haunt the program until the day the Eagles do win.

"We just have to go out and win now," Warren said. "The only way we can make people believe in us is to win. And we have to do that by winning on the scoreboard. We've won in a lot of areas the last two years except on the scoreboard. But it's on the scoreboard where everybody can see improvement. And our ultimate goal is to win."

Those are much the same words Gaines used two years ago when he came to Abilene.
It would be nice if somebody would ever stay long enough to make those words a reality.