McCarvel heads for Carroll

Russell McCarvel is going home.

The 39-year-old McCarvel, who has been an assistant baseball and football coach the past four years at Carson High School, will leave the area at the end of the school year to teach math at Jefferson County High School in Helena, Montana and coach running backs at Carroll College next year.

McCarvel came to Carson from Glendive, Montana where he coached football for five years. McCarvel played against current Carson coach Shane Quilling when the two were in high school.

"We weren't looking to leave," McCarvel said. "People here in Carson have been awesome. It's been great to work with Shane and the rest of the football staff, and the same thing for Steve (Cook) and his staff.

"I wasn't putting out a resume or anything. I just couldn't pass it up. It's a great opportunity."

McCarvel and his wife, who works at Sierra-Tahoe Hospital in Carson City, usually would go back to see their parents during school vacations, and that's how the opportunity arose.

McCarvel was good friends with Jim Hogan, a current assistant at Carroll College. The duo had coached against each other in Montana.

"Every Christmas when I was in town, I'd visit and we would watch game film or go out to breakfast together," McCarvel said. "I actually accepted the football job around the first of the year."

However Carroll College isn't like University of Nevada where there are eight or nine full-time assistants. McCarvel said Carroll College has three full-time football slots - the head coach and two assistants.

"I had to nail down a teaching job," said McCarvel, who wouldn't have left the area without one. "Over the spring I interviewed for a job at Jefferson (280 students), and a few weeks ago they offered me that job. The whole thing had been in the works for a while. They are going to let me out of last period to travel to the college.

"They mostly have had young guys on their staff that stick around for a couple of years and leave. The head coach (Mike Van Diest) wanted more veterans on his staff."

And, no doubt since McCarvel is going back to his roots, Van Diest won't have to worry about any defection after a couple of years.

McCarvel said his wife, who has already been hired at the hospital in Helena, is excited by the move.

"We will be a lot closer to her family and my family," McCarvel said.

Carroll College should sound familiar to local football fans. Carroll tried to recruit ex-Carson linebacker Nick Shine, who declined a partial scholarship to walk on at University of Nevada.

McCarvel should be right at home coaching running backs. He worked last year as the quarterback coach and offensive coordinator. He said most of his experience has come on the offensive side of the football.

He certainly will be missed both in the classroom and athletic fields at Carson.

BASEBALL NONSENSE

I've often wondered why the NIAA handles the 4A baseball tournament the way it does - using both Carson and Reno every year because both have lights and are kept in nice shape.

The way the first-round fell on Wednesday, Reno had to come and play Carson at Carson on Thursday. So that means people from Reno, who help run the tournament may or may not have been able to make the trip to Carson.

Why not just play the tournament at one site every year and rotate it between Carson and Reno? With a little juggling of the schedule, you could either add a game to the first two days of the tournament.

From a coaching viewpoint, it makes it tough to scout, because sometimes Reno and Carson are hosting games in different brackets like what happened on Wednesday. Carson played Galena in one game on one side of the bracket and Douglas played Manogue in a game that was in the other bracket.

So, if Douglas wanted to scout its potential second-round opponent it meant getting in the car and driving to Reno High. Not something you want to do at 5 p.m. on a weekday.

It's an idea certainly worth considering I think.