MISSOULA – It can take a while for a team to get comfortable with a new group of coaches. But the Grizzlies know one thing about their instructors this spring, the new guys know what they are talking about.
Bobby Hauck brought together a veteran group for his second stint at Montana. Counting the head man, Montana has a combined total of 197 years of experience coaching at the college level. Many, like associate head coach Brent Pease (who had stops at Boise State, Florida and Washington), offensive coordinator Timm Rosenbach (Washington State) and defensive coordinator Kent Baer (Arizona State, Stanford, Notre Dame and Washington just to name a few) have all held good jobs at the FBS level.
Hauck knows the opportunity to do something special at Montana convinced many of his assistants to turn down other opportunities.
“Guys have to be interested in taking the job. They have to be eager to come do this,” explained Hauck. “You look at what people are making around the country. If you look at Kent Baer, he’s got more experience than some staffs in our league (45 years total). And certainly some of the places he has coached are a lot more lucrative than working here. But he really wanted to be here.”
Many of the Montana coaches, including Hauck, started their coaching careers long before their players were born. But the current Grizzlies know that hard-earned knowledge will play a big part in the team’s success.
“The experience they bring in, all of them have been around at great places, had great careers for themselves,” said junior quarterback Dalton Sneed, a transfer who is battling for the starting job. “So every coach has a different factor they bring in that we can learn from.”
Hauck wants high school coaches from around Montana to feel “welcome and attached” to his program, so they will share some of that experience at a coaching clinic next week.
For $50, coaches can watch Griz practice on Friday, April 6th, then attend a few breakout sessions with the Griz coaching staff that night. The clinic will wrap up with a few presentations by Griz and high school coaches Chris Murdock of Billings Senior and Dane Oliver of Missoula Sentinel on Saturday morning in the Washington-Grizzly Champions Center.
