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Feb. 15—Perhaps more than any other career, coaching takes you to unexpected places. And perhaps more than any other coach, Jason Eck didn’t need another reminder.
Reporting to work at a public transit center in Macomb, Illinois did the trick, though.
“Kind of a time where (I thought), ‘hey man,'” he laughed, “‘is there something better to be doing?'”
It was 2012. Western Illinois had just fired head coach Mark Hendrickson after finishing 3-8 in his fourth season. That left Eck, the Leathernecks’ first-year offensive line coach, looking for his fourth school in as many seasons, fifth in 10 years. Everything — leaving coaching, leaving football — was on the table.
The one saving grace? He was still getting paid. “Which helped me out,” Eck said.
But there was a catch. Where most schools would buy out the staff and let bygones be bygones, Western Illinois kept them on the payroll and reassigned them to different departments until their contracts ran out. At first Eck was sent to the school’s golf course for offseason maintenance. He changed oil on lawnmowers. Golf carts. Menial stuff.
It wasn’t long before he put in a call to Hendrickson’s agent.
“I said, ‘hey, I think there’s gotta be something different,'” he remembered.
Jude Kiah caught wind of what was going on. As the director of Western Illinois’ bookstore and transit department, he volunteered to supervise two of the departing coaches, giving them each a cubicle at the school’s transit center.
Eck ended up being one of them. At first, it was a little awkward. But Kiah, a former Division III basketball coach in Georgia and longtime high school official, could sympathize with him. Besides, he liked Eck’s personality.
Day by day, they started talking.
“It wasn’t like he was sitting in my office and saying, ‘I’m going to be a Division I head coach,'” Kiah remembered….
Source link : https://sports.yahoo.com/25-overnight-success-inside-jason-045900559.html
Author : Albuquerque Journal, N.M.
Publish date : 2025-02-16 04:59:00
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