Hillsborough coach Earl Garcia embarking on 50th football season

TAMPA — August hasn’t yet dawned, and freshly minted septuagenarian Earl Garcia already is navigating an all-out blitz of questions, paperwork and various logistical snags on this overcast Saturday morning inside the Hillsborough High fieldhouse.

Between a reporters’ questions, Garcia gazes at eligibility data on his laptop, barks at players to get suited up and lined up, instructs a parent on where to deliver the food for the afternoon team meal, helps a longtime assistant log on to another laptop and watches one of his four grandkids scurry around the locker room.

Welcome to the 2023 Terriers’ picture day, which Garcia, 71, calls “the most dreaded day of the year.”

“You know why?” Garcia says. “Because high school football is a do-it-yourself proposition.”

For a full half-century, Garcia — Hillsborough’s head coach since 1993 — has loved a lifestyle that hasn’t always loved him back. At this level, the job’s demands seem endless: from practice to paperwork, lining fields to laundry. Garcia, who entered the state’s deferred retirement option program (DROP) for teachers years ago, doesn’t have to coach or teach anymore.

But he still does both. The vocation’s familial, emotional and competitive tug has become a gravitational pull from which he can’t break away.

“He’s a miracle man,” said 76-year-old Terriers defensive line coach Vernon Henderson, who has served alongside Garcia for nearly a quarter-century. “I don’t understand how he does it.”

Perhaps it’s passion. Or a loyal support system. Or the pursuit of an ever-elusive state title. At any rate, Garcia is embarking on his 50th season as a local prep football coach, including his years as an assistant and head coach.

During this tenure, which includes five seasons as an assistant (1977-1981) and 31 as head coach (1993-present), Hillsborough has had 16 principals and 17 athletic directors. Garcia might go through one or two more before retiring; grandson Earl Garcia IV is only a Terriers freshman.

“My wife (Gilda) tells me I can’t quit until my grandson’s done,” said Garcia, whose 287 wins are the most of any bay area prep football coach. “So I’m going to be the head coach as long as G-4 (Earl Garcia IV) is playing for me.”

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At the outset of this milestone autumn, Garcia — a Plant High and USF alumnus — spoke about the job’s lingering appeal, the evolution and regression of high school football, and his proudest feats.

Do you remember your very first game as a high school coach?

“It was at Jefferson, I was a JV assistant. It was the spring jamboree of 1974. And you know why I can remember that? It’s because I was doing my internship at Jefferson, and I found this little Hispanic kid who was a soccer player. We had no kicker, so I talked him into becoming our kicker. He couldn’t speak English and I couldn’t speak Spanish, so it was a match made in heaven.

“It’s the first time he had seen all these people in the stadium. He put the ball on the tee, and it wasn’t just right. So we taught him to raise his hand, and they blow the whistle and he approaches the ball, and he stops. He fixes the ball on the tee again.”

(Garcia recalls the kicker doing that twice, eliciting some expletives from Dragons coach Clarence White)

“So that’s my first experience coaching in high school. I got cussed out by the head coach.”

So why do you keep doing this?

“That’s a great question. If I tell people this, it sounds trite, it doesn’t sound real, but I’m absolutely enchanted by the game. It’s a human chess match, and I’m motivated by learning more about the game ... how to teach the scheme with the different kids.

“I still wake up in the middle of the night to pee like old men do, and before I get done I’m thinking of something I need to do or I can do better. To get up every morning waiting — I can’t wait to get to work. And I’m married to my best friend, so I can’t wait to get home. So I live a very enchanted life. I’m happy with my kids and grandkids in the program. Life is good.”

Which achievement(s) make you proudest?

“Our effort here to help the kids be successful in life. That’s my proudest. We haven’t won the state championship. Played for it (the Class 6A state title game 1996). I’m not very proud of (never winning one). However, I am proud of the efforts that we’ve all made. We’ve never short-changed the kids one second. We’re not coming to practice unprepared.”

What’s the best thing to happen to prep football in the last 50 years?

“It’s exponentially safer. It’s like auto racing — it’s unrecognizable. Fifty years ago when we were coaching ... we had no water breaks, we counted the lightning strikes and the thunder, we didn’t have trainers. Rehab was ice, maybe. No taping, no rehab. It’s exponentially safer for the kids, it’s exponentially more difficult for the kids to grow up now than it was 50 years ago.

“The outside influences. They have adult influences, and they have children’s minds. And we have a lot of children being raised by children, so it’s difficult, man. It’s very rare to be able to help a kid without a parent’s help, it really is. And I think it’s something that we’ve done a good job here of. Up until the pandemic, my coaches did home visits every summer, and they went in and talked to the parents, saw how the kids lived, saw what environment was there. It helped us be more empathetic to their problems, because a lot of times you didn’t realize what was going on at home until it was too late.”

I was going to ask you the worst thing to happen to prep football in the last 50 years, but I think you just answered it.

“Gosh, there are several things. I think the advent of social media was a plague. I think it promotes kids to self-promote, and in a lot of cases, we have kids who don’t get affirmation at home. So what they do is, they opt for self-promotion, and they begin to believe their own stuff that they’re putting on.

“I think the advent of special coaches or personal coaches ... that’s trickled down (from the NFL) to us. I have players that go to a quarterback coach. I have players that go to (lineman coaches) and this and that. And the advent of combines and the advent of 7-on-7 tournaments — a classic case of adults making money off kids’ dreams. I abhor that, I hate that. I hate those parasites that attach themselves to kids and families and feed them a line and collect money for it, when we’ve been doing it here for free since the beginning of time.”

Are you superstitious?

“Absolutely not. I’m not a smart guy, but I have common sense. It doesn’t make sense, if I wear the same socks, are we going to win? The same underwear and we’re going to win? Then we don’t have to work out, we don’t have to lift weights. It’s all about my underwear and my socks.”

Garcia by the numbers

2 Children

3 Schools at which Garcia has served as head coach (Boca Ciega, Gaither, Hillsborough)

4 Grandchildren (with a fifth on the way)

10 U.S. presidents who have served since Garcia began his prep coaching career in 1974

11 District titles won by Garcia-coached teams

24 Terriers alumni (who played for Garcia) to get an opportunity in an NFL camp

24 Playoff berths earned by Garcia-coached teams

287 Career wins as a prep head coach, most of any bay area football coach