An Interview with Incoming Chandler Head Football Coach Rick Garretson

After four championships in eight seasons, Shaun Aguano left Chandler High to take the running backs coach position at Arizona State University. As Chandler High did with Aguano, the Wolves looked within the program to find their next head coach, promoting long-time offensive assistant Rick Garretson to the top position.

Rick Garretson sat with ArizonaVarsity.com's Ralph Amsden for his first interview since formally accepting the job.

ArizonaVarsity: Congratulations! This is something that a month ago maybe you aren't even thinking about, and now here you are, entertaining college assistant and head coaches, and taking the reins of this program. How's it feel?

Rick Garretson: It feels great. I appreciate all the support from Dr. Camille Casteel and Marcus Williams and the CUSD district office, as well as Principal Larry Rother here at Chandler, and obviously Chandler athletic director Jim Culver, to get things going and allowing me to be part of keeping the staff and kids together and make sure we move this thing forward in the direction it needs to go.

AV: Walk me through the domino effect that led to Shaun Aguano leaving for Arizona State and you making the decision to pursue this job.

RG: When that (job) opened, I was pretty sure Herman Edwards was going to offer Shaun the running backs coach and allow him to recruit Arizona, which is a great move, and Shaun will do very well at that. All of the sudden you come back to what's going to happen with Chandler football, and you've got the core of the coaches that have developed the program, and the action and success on the field. How are we going to keep that in place? Several staff members interviewed for the job. We wanted to keep it in house, and we all would have worked for each other. Ultimately it came my way, and I have the support of the staff, and we're keeping the staff together. Now we can give the kids direction, because for the last three weeks it's been pretty tough when you don't have a head coach, and a focal point for the parents. We talked this morning about how the kids and parents were very patient about letting the process work it's way through.

We were going to do everything we could to make sure it stayed here. Ohana-Makoa is a tradition here, and you've got to live it. We have. Obviously Coach Richardson, Coach Scott and Coach Murdock have all been here at least 18 years. You want to keep those guys on staff. There's the relationship they have with the players, and the fact that when college coaches come in here, they see that the players are college ready no matter what level or division. You don't want to let that go. I've got a great opportunity to go ahead and lead us in that direction, and it's onward and upward.

AV: What is your relationship with Shaun Aguano, and how has it prepared you to take this next step?

RG: Coming from California, I had different ideas than the people that were here when Coach Jim Ewan brought me on in 2010, and then Shaun got the head coaching job in 2011. There were some things I told Shaun that he needed to do immediately. One was invest in an end zone camera, and the other was we need to travel, because it would bring notoriety to the program. He took those things and ran with them. He'd usually come and talk to me about opponents. Being the former offensive coordinator of Servite in the Trinity League, I was very familiar with St. John Bosco, so we chose them. They happened to win the national championship game that year with Josh Rosen, and we had a nice lead at halftime. That changed as the game moved along, but I think it also changed the culture of Chandler High, and is a huge reason we were able to get that first win over Hamilton. From that point forward, we were always looking to go out and play the top people in the country. Next thing you know it was Valor Christian, and then Bishop Gorman, and then Corona Centennial, and then IMG. Putting ourselves out there, testing our kids early, we always felt that would be a huge asset for us at the end of the season. Shaun would always talk to me about those things.

AV: So you're saying he was open to input from the staff?

RG: Absolutely. Shaun understood that you're only as good as the people you surround yourself with. Eric Richardson is the best speed trainer in the country. Coach Scott is unbelievable, not only as a defensive backs coach, but in the student leadership program we have here at Chandler. Roger Murdock's work with the linebackers. My staff on the offensive side. I mean, Shaun gave me the reins in 2016 and we've got some pretty high octane guys on this offensive staff, and he let us run with it, and we ran with it. All of the sudden you're developing a certain type of offense that comes to be nationally known. Not a lot of programs throw for 4,000 and run for 4,000 in a single year. It's never just a one-man show. It's a staff, and that staff has to be able to work together and make decisions in key moments. That's all preparation, and there's nobody that prepares better in the state of Arizona than Chandler High's football staff.

AV: It sounds like the Ohana-Makoa culture is something that you try and model together as a coaching staff instead of just trying to impose the ideas on the kids.

RG: Exactly. It's about doing the right thing on the football field, and off the football field. Outside the coaches office, we have a plaque that states the vision of Chandler football. The Ohana and Makoa, and the why, the how, the where and the when. It's all specifically spelled out of how that happens. When you have those type of bullet points, and the kids are looking at that, and drawing from that every day, it leads to a lot of success.

AV: You have said you were molded as a coach elsewhere. Chandler gets a lot of people who transfer in, and get enveloped into the Ohana-Makoa culture while bringing their own flavor and culture to the mix. Their story resembles yours. Tell me about your previous experience at Servite.

RG: I played at Servite, and I went from San Diego State from 1974-78. I actually moved to Arizona and had athletic shoe stores here, where I was an original Nike team dealer. I got to know all the old-time icon coaches. Jesse Parker. Karl Keifer. Delvin Schuttes. Pat Farrell. Then I moved back to California and got into the coaching side of things. From 1989-2004, I coached at Servite. Our rival was Mater Dei. We were playing at Angels Stadium in front of 20,000 people on some nights. In the Trinity league, you had to know how to coach. You had expectations, and that helps develop you as a teacher, an educator, and a football coach.

AV: Open Division Playoffs- what's Chandler's attitude about this new challenge?

RG: I think it's outstanding. You want to play the best. We show that with where we choose to go play. It's awesome. We have the ability to go ahead and play Coach Jason Mohns at Saguaro, we have the ability to go play Coach Richard Taylor and his great Centennial program, who we haven't played in a while. Obviously the great program at Perry, and the whole 6A, like Pinnacle and Coach Dana Zupke. They all do great jobs with their teams, and having a three week tournament to see who is going to be on top- we think that's great.

AV: How do you expand upon the tradition of traveling to play games in a way that continues to foster into the spirit of preparation, without it overflowing into something that functions as a vanity exercise?

RG: Right. When you talk about the tradition and the culture, you want to go out and play the best. We have the part of our schedule that's been placed on us, and so we'll open up at Liberty in Las Vegas. That'll be our game 1. We're trying to find a game 4, we're trying to bring somebody here so that we'll have four home games instead of three home games. Could it be a possibility of Mater Dei, or St. John Bosco, or maybe somebody from Texas? These are all things that have been discussed amongst ourselves, to make sure that we always have a national-type of game at the beginning of every season, because I think it displays the depth of Arizona football. We've had our success. You have Coach Taylor beating Bishop Gorman and St. Thomas Aquinas. You have Jason beating some nice teams at Saguaro, and going out and showing the nation that we play pretty darn good football in the state of Arizona.

AV: You've had success with quarterbacks at Chandler High who all had different skillsets. From Brett Hundley to Jacob Conover, or Mason Moran, or your son Darell. Some people say it's the guitar that makes the guitarist, others say it's the guitarist that makes the guitar- where do you feel like that balance is with you and the quarterbacks you've had?

RG: I've been fortunate. Obviously Brett Hundley was his own thing. I really didn't deal a lot with Brett when I first got here. We got to be pretty close at the end, when he was a senior. Obviously Darell and his development, and Bryce (Perkins). Everybody's got their own their (drawbacks), whether that's 'you're not that fast,' or 'you're not that tall,' or 'you're not a true quarterback.' All these things that motivate and allow us to develop. When Shaun came to me in 2012 and said 'I want you to take quarterbacks,' there were certain parameters I had to have, and that's that they would be in control. My quarterbacks are in control of everything, from protections, to the calls, to communications, to knowing what's going on, and making proper reads and understanding the offense. That's how myself and my staff develops, and we'll develop the same thing on defense under my direction- that the kids take ownership of their side of the ball. From the quarterback position, he's got the ball in his hands every time, and like I said, I've been fortunate.

We're a lucky state, because we've got Mike Giovando, Dan Manucci, Rudy Carpenter and Dennis Gile. Those are all top-notch quarterback coaches. I've never been the guy to say who you can and can't train with. You've got to embrace that, because those guys know what they're doing. Once they get to us, we develop the offensive philosophy, because you don't play for the quarterback coach, you play for Chandler High.

Throwing is throwing. It's all about timing, reads, and getting the ball out of your hand. When you go watch Chandler at a 7-on-7 tournament, you can tell- the Chandler quarterback's not just back there waiting for people to get open.

AV: Is 7-on-7 a net positive?

RG: We want to find out what those kids can do. We can learn that in the summer time. We can learn how it's going to propel that year's offense, because every offense is a little bit different from the year before.

AV: We've had three years of Jacob Conover.

RG: Which is uncommon.

AV: Very uncommon. And he might be the most successful quarterback in Arizona high school football history.

RG: He won a lot of games.

AV: And he was well-liked off the field. Are you worried about someone trying to come in and fill those very big shoes?

RG: Not at all.

AV: So who's next in the line of quarterbacks?

RG: We've got another guy this year that's going to be a very good player in Mikey Keene. And I'll give you an example of why I'm not worried. Jake got hurt in the Highland game. He got hurt in the second quarter and he played through it. If the championship had been that following Saturday, I'm not so sure Jacob would have been able to play. Mikey took all the reps in the three practices after the semifinal. We didn't miss a beat. When I asked Jake if I needed to be getting Mikey ready to start, he said 'no coach, but we're going to prepare him right.' And Jake was involved in the preparation. He had the respect of his teammates too, which is not easy for a sophomore. If it came down to something like we had to play Mikey in that game, we would have been fine even though he's never started a game.

He is the best on-the-run thrower I've had at Chandler, and we've had some good ones, but I've never had a kid throw on the run like he does. We'll have to see if we can incorporate some of that stuff into a future offense, because you have to build things around what your kids do best. We've also got some young guys coming up through the freshman level and at the JV level who are going to be ready to compete.

AV: What's this team's best kept secret?

RG: Andrew Knoche is an up-and-coming high-level defensive coordinator. You saw what he was able to do in the state championship game, doing some different things they hadn't done before, and you saw the result. We're going to take that to a level where we're as diversified on defense as we are on offense.

AV: Let's talk recruiting. You fit this interview in today between several high-level assistant coaches coming in and out of your office. What's the secret sauce as far as keeping these college coaches coming back?

RG: You don't sell kids, so to speak. You don't sell a batch of goods. You're honest with them. It's their decision to evaluate. That's their job. It's our job to talk about their family life, character and work ethic. Their film is their film. Their film is their resumé.

It all comes back to the idea of competition. We had a running back named TJ Green, who going into his junior year, was a fourth team tailback.

AV: When I saw him have success in a preseason scrimmage, I asked Chris Chick if he was going to play that year, and he earnestly told me, 'probably not.'

RG: And all of the sudden you have Chase Lucas go down, and some other issues, and boom. Next thing you know, here comes TJ Green against Chaparral. 1,800 yards later he got his opportunity and made it stick.

When you have that culture, which starts in the weight room, and goes to the practice field, then goes to how you warm up, then goes to compete in 1's vs. 1's. It's not just one thing, it's everything taken in.

And now you have the coaching staff. I can't have DeCarlos Brooks carrying the ball 43 times against Perry. That was my bad. In a championship game, maybe you're going to see someone go 29, 30, 31, but never a 43 in a mid-season game. We have guys like Eric Richardson that know how to direct, and know how to keep kids healthy, and know how to teach technique so, so when they go (to college), they're prepared.

Chad Carpenter? Unreal wide receivers coach. Played in the league. Played at Wazzu. What he and Coach Colin Bottrill bring to the table with the receivers... I'll give you an example. Shaun was the head coach of Team USA in 2016. We got to play Canada, and I got to be on the coaching staff. I've got all the top players in the country- guys like Dwayne Haskins who was headed to Ohio State. I've got the receiving corps, guys who are committed to USC, Notre Dame, Texas, they're all the 'who's who' of the country. And then I've got N'Keal Harry, and he's there, and nobody can cover him. He's telling me, 'nobody knows how to get off press coverage,' and 'nobody knows what a stem curl is,' and 'nobody knows what a point curl is.' All these different facets of the game that he took for granted, so to speak, because he was taught, and the other guys he's seeing don't have that. And you only know what you know, right? So when DeCarlos Brooks goes to watch Cal in their bowl practice, he's going 'oh my god coach, they practice just like us.'

I just had Keary Colbert from USC leave my office, and he said, 'I was at one of your spring practices last year, and that's a well-structured, well-organized machine out there.' We work hard at that. We know how to do it, and we know how to develop it so that when guys come in and they want to meet one of our players, it helps them get the things they want to come their way, preferably offers.