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Hall brings in defensive back coach
Courtesy Edmonton Journal:
There will be a new look to the Edmonton Eskimos secondary in 2009 but, in a certain way, it will be comfortably deja vu for the club’s new defensive backs coach, Stacey Hairston.
That’s mainly because the 41-year-old Hairston played alongside Eskimos rookie head coach Richie Hall for three years in Saskatchewan in the early 1990s.
If you’re going to install a new defensive system, it surely makes sense to have like-minded people doing the hands-on coaching. For Hall, that means having former Saskatchewan and Winnipeg head coach Jim Daley as defensive co-ordinator and Hairston supervising the secondary.
“Me and Richie held down the left side there in 1990-91,” Hairston said, chatting amiably after practice on a wet, raw Monday.
“At that time, Richie was a seasoned veteran, I was a rookie coming into the league, so he was the one who kind of took me under his wing and was teaching me and helping me out as far as technique and stuff like that.” Hairston played corner for two years and defensive halfback for a third year in Regina, before playing two seasons with the NFL’s Cleveland Browns.
Obviously, the money and the challenge of the NFL were important to Hairston, but for sheer enjoyment, the CFL was a fine, if nerve-racking place to be a defensive back.
The CFL was loaded at quarterback in the ’90s, with Doug Flutie, Tracy Ham, Kent Austin, Matt Dunigan, Damon Allen and Danny Barrett filling the skies with footballs aimed at athletes like Raghib (Rocket) Ismail, Stephen Jones, Darren Flutie, Don Narcisse, David Williams, Earl Winfield and Allen Pitts.
“It was a shootout every week,” Hairston recalled. “It was never a dull moment playing corner in the CFL in those days.” On first reference, what has changed in how defensive backs cover their men in the CFL in ’09? “You probably see a little bit more creativity on offence as far as bunches and clusters (formations) and motion,” Hairston said. “Of course, there has always been motion, especially back in the day with Toronto, with Ismail and Clemons.” The current landscape is not unlike the ’90s, with QBs like Anthony Calvillo, Kerry Joseph, Ricky Ray, Buck Pierce and Henry Burris on the boil, throwing to Ben Cahoon, Jamal Richardson, Geroy Simon, Ken-Yon Rambo, Fred Stamps, Kamau Peterson, Jeremaine Copeland and Weston Drexler.
Hairston has more than a, beg pardon, passing acquaintance with the current situation. An assistant for the past 12 years at his alma mater, Ohio Northern University, Hairston has kept in regular touch with Hall.
In 2008, Hairston was a guest coach with the Roughriders in Saskatchewan, and the one-time backfield partners have had a tacit understanding through the years that if either one got a head coaching job, there would be an opening for the other on his staff.
Hairston served as interim head coach with the Polar Bears at Ohio Northern in 2003, leading the club to victories in four of its last five games in a 4-6 season. When he wasn’t named the head coach that off-season, Hairston remained on the staff as defensive backs coach.
MacKINNON Continued from C1 As fate had it, Hairston also was head coach of the Ohio Northern women’s golf team. That role came with the job description, which was fine with Hairston, a keen recreational golfer, though not a pro.
“Coaching golf wasn’t an issue because I love golf,” Hairston said. “The biggest adjustment was coaching women.
“Coaching men, I could say what I want, yell at them, if necessary. You can’t yell at women, especially college girls. It’s a little different. They’re very, very emotional, they were in tears all the time. There’s no crying in golf, OK? I set down some rules real early. The first match I go to, the girls are crying because they hit some bad shots.
“I was like, ‘What are you crying for?’ That’s (bad shots) part of the game. As they adapted to me and got used to me, the crying stopped.” The team succeeded. The last three years, the Ohio Northern women’s team was ranked in the Top 20 in U.S. college, won the Ohio Athletic Conference championship and competed at nationals.
Still, the football head coaching opportunities have been front and centre, and in recent years, Hairston reckoned it was just a matter of time before Hall got his chance.
“I was hoping he would get a job a few years ago because he has been interviewing for head coaching jobs for a while,” he said.
A couple of years ago, when Hall thought a head coaching offer might come his way, he alerted Hairston.
“I really wasn’t ready to move on because of the birth of my twins,” Hairston said of the now 22-month-old boy-girl twins.
He also has a boy, 41/2.
“But everything happens for a reason. God has blessed Richie with this opportunity in Edmonton, of all places, which we all know is the flagship of the CFL.
“For me to get an opportunity to come here is truly a blessing because I was at a point where the babies were getting a little older, the family’s doing well and I was looking for a change. Timing is everything.” In golf and football. But no tears, thank you.
