Hot rumor on the Breck job

[GreenMonster]

A little birdy told me it would be David Fambrough out of 1A Seymour that will be hired sometime early this next week. Fambrough only spent 1 year at Seymour, but had them in the 1A big school championship game.

[grahampaw]

That will be a great choice.....any leads on who it will be next year?

[rockdale80]

Originally posted by grahampaw
That will be a great choice.....any leads on who it will be next year?

hahaha...that's funny

[injuredinmelee]

Originally posted by grahampaw
That will be a great choice.....any leads on who it will be next year?

good stuff.

[RiverRat19]

Originally posted by GreenMonster
A little birdy told me it would be David Fambrough out of 1A Seymour that will be hired sometime early this next week. Fambrough only spent 1 year at Seymour, but had them in the 1A big school championship game.

They go to the finals in his first year after being sub .500 the year before. Must be something there... Good luck to Breckenridge finding someone who can stick there.

[BreckTxLonghorn]

Heard rumor on Fambrough as well; we'll see. Here's an article about the search as well the utter confusion as to why the school board would not support Funderburg's hiring. Again, if you don't want the coach, that's one thing. But if you refuse to give your reasoning, that's another.

>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>

Mystery surrounds coach search
By CARLOS MENDEZ
Star-Telegram staff writer
BRECKENRIDGE -- It's not often people cry as they leave a school board meeting. But it happened here Tuesday night when Donny Funderberg was rejected as the high school's new head football coach.
He was the hometown candidate, a Breckenridge graduate, a former assistant, the favorite of the players and part of a state championship team just last season as an assistant at Class 5A Austin Lake Travis.
He seemed an ideal choice, if only for stability's sake after the previous two coaches had quit just a year apart.
So that could explain the emotional reaction to the board's 4-3 decision.
"Everybody was shocked," running back Paxton Sullivan said. "Nobody could believe it."
"I just left," said Sharon Kitchens, a retired sophomore English teacher at Breckenridge High. "That was the only way I could deal with it. It really upset me."
"The town is outraged right now," Breckenridge American reporter Bryan Herring said. "There's not anybody happy about it. Already, there are letters to the editor. People have made T-shirts in support of Donny."
It is high school football in Texas, after all. That's another part of the explanation.
But Breckenridge, an oil and gas town of 6,000 an hour's drive northeast of Abilene and 110 miles west of Fort Worth, is not just any high school football town. It has a proud tradition that includes six state championships, although none since the 1950s.
So passion over the football team might be expected. But in this case, the emotion includes bewilderment. No one knows why the board would reject a hometown choice. The trustees met in a closed session, reappeared to announce their decision, gave no explanation and ended the meeting.
Board president Bryan Woodward, who voted no, did not return a phone call seeking comment.
The board will hear another recommendation Monday night, but no matter who is hired, he will be the Buckaroos' third coach in three seasons. He will already be behind, with no 7-on-7 or other summer work scheduled.
That's not a good thing for a team preparing to play in perhaps the strongest Class 3A district ever formed, against Abilene Wylie, Brownwood, Snyder, Sweetwater and Graham. (There are 11 state championships in that group, and Breckenridge's six make it 17).
"It's going to take a unique individual to get our kids motivated," said high school principal Bryan Dieterich, who led the search committee. "It's hard to keep motivated because all you hear from the outside is people saying, 'Man, you all are in trouble,' which I don't believe. If we get the right motivator in that position, we've got a chance at making improvements."
Enrollment has fallen modestly over the years at Breckenridge, from 600 to about 450 in the past 10 years or so. But in football, the decline has been far worse.
The football players numbered more than 100 in the late '90s under Ross Dodson, who had 13-1, 12-1 and 11-2 teams his last three seasons.
"Now it's down below 30," said Curry Browning, a former player who moved back to Breckenridge last season after coaching at Justin Northwest and Euless Trinity. He was a classmate of Funderburg and has a sixth-grade son in football. "Fifteen or 20 players quit last year, and they didn't even have a JV schedule."
The school board might simply have been making a statement of no confidence in the selections of Dieterich, who has been part of the previous two coaching searches that led to Jeff Berry, who resigned after going 3-7 last season, and Stan Howard, who was 14-8 in two seasons but whose old-fashioned Wing-T offense did not ignite the imagination of many fans. (Howard's first team had a chance to go far, but its top two players were hurt early in an area-round game against Bridgeport).
Or, the board might have wanted more experience in its new coach. Although Funderburg was a longtime assistant at Breckenridge and coached Texas receiver Quan Cosby at Class 2A Mart, this would have been his first head coaching job.
Whatever, the board's reasoning remains under wraps.
"That's the thing," Browning said. "If they're trying to make a statement to the community, why don't they stand up and say that's what they want to do? I think the public deserves it, as well as Donny Funderburg, some kind of reason.
"What's their goal as a school board for the district?"
The players aren't sure what to think, either. The prospect of Funderburg's return had encouraged extra boys to come out for football.
"He was the main coach we had respect for and we would do anything for," running back Troy Roberson said. "We've known him most of our lives."
Some of the players said on the spot Tuesday night they wouldn't play next year. Of course, that makes the prospects for the season even less certain.
But with another chance to select a coach just a few days away, the resilience of teenagers is already starting to show.
"The next coach may be a great coach," Sullivan said. "He may take us deep in the playoffs. Hopefully it will be a good decision. They must have some real special guy coming."
Breckenridge
Population: Approx. 6,000
County: Stephens, which covers 921 square miles
Economy: Based on ranching, oil and gas, small manufacturing, service business and recreation
Named after: Former Vice President John Cabell Breckenridge (1856)
Source: Breckenridge Chamber of Commerce
cmendez@star-telegram.com
Carlos Mendez, 817-390-7407

[VWG]

As long as they give the new coach time..... cause he's gonna need it.

[RMAC]

A guy I work with who lives in Breck said it doesn't even look like they'll have a team next year. That's a sad situation too. Breckenridge is a great football town with a great history and the possibility of them not even fielding a team this year is pretty disheartening.

[TinyTim]

Originally posted by RMAC
A guy I work with who lives in Breck said it doesn't even look like they'll have a team next year. That's a sad situation too. Breckenridge is a great football town with a great history and the possibility of them not even fielding a team this year is pretty disheartening.

What a shame. Spending millions of dollars on new turf, and new facilities and won't even hire the one coach that can rejuvenate the program (Donny).

Sounds like the AD will be next.

[S_Tex_3A_Fan]

He's a Tarleton guy so he has to be good. He is a good guy.

[BreckTxLonghorn]

Originally posted by RMAC
A guy I work with who lives in Breck said it doesn't even look like they'll have a team next year. That's a sad situation too. Breckenridge is a great football town with a great history and the possibility of them not even fielding a team this year is pretty disheartening.

I haven't heard anything about that. I think this senior crop would play iron man football before they allow a season to just be lost.

There were talks that players wouldn't play for anyone but Funderburg, but I think that when it came time to put on pads, no one would/could walk away.