Westfield football hires longtime assistant and alum as new head coach

It isn’t often the Westfield High School football team needs to fill a head coaching vacancy. But with Jim DeSarno being promoted to athletic director after 18 years at the football helm, the 127-year-old program needed to make a change.

It’s only fitting the 13th head coach in the storied program’s history would not only be one of DeSarno’s longtime assistants, but also a Blue Devils alum.

Matt Andzel, who played three years of varsity at Westfield for longtime coach Ed Tranchina, before graduating in 2002 and going on to play at the College of New Jersey, has been the Blue Devils defensive line coach for the past 11 seasons. He was approved as the new head man at Tuesday’s Board of Education meeting.

He takes over a program that has not only had just a dozen head coaches before him, but one that has played since 1897 that has a long, storied history of success, with five state championships, 12 undefeated seasons, and a culture in which Andzel is quite immersed.

“Growing up in the town and hearing about Coach Gary Kehler, he was just this legend and tis revered icon in the town.” Andzel said. “Coach Tranchina used to talk about him all the time, and I loved coach Tranchina, as well. Heard about the history of the program and how they won all these state championships and played in front of these crazy crowds, and it created this aura about the program that people admired.

“On that end, it’s still sinking in with me. I knew this was a big job, but I must have had over 100 text messages from people in the last couple days. If people know about it that much and care about it that much, it’s really special.”

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Source link : https://sports.yahoo.com/football-westfield-hires-longtime-assistant-184838148.html

Author : Courier News

Publish date : 2024-06-14 02:05:23

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