Like so many football coaches from this area, Bret Ingalls owes some of his success to names like Gilbertson, Erickson and Armstrong.
But unlike other people with ties to the Snohomish County coaching tree, Ingalls will be on an NFL sideline this weekend during today’s NFC championship game.
Ingalls, in his first year as the New Orleans Saints running backs coach, can’t help but look back as he prepares for one of the biggest games of his life.
A 1978 graduate of Snohomish High, Ingalls was a standout running back for Dick Armstrong’s powerhouse teams in the late 70s. Keith Gilbertson Sr. was an assistant on that team, and when a neck injury cut short Ingalls’ college career at Wichita State, the elder Gilbertson put in a call to his son, Keith Jr. who was an assistant on Dennis Erickson’s staff at Idaho. Ingalls went to Idaho mostly to earn a degree, but also to see if coaching might suit him, and after spending a season as a student coach, he realized he had found his calling.
“I went there to get my degree, not necessarily to be a coach the rest of my life,” said Ingalls. “I had a good time, we won a lot of games and I kind of fell into the profession.”
Ingalls eventually left Idaho for San Diego State, where he spent four season, and has also coached at Louisville, Northern Iowa, again at Idaho, Indiana State, Miami of Ohio, and most recently Northwestern where he was the offensive line coach and run game coordinator.
Yet for all of his many stops, Ingalls said his early days tutoring under some of Snohomish County’s best-known coaches are what defined him as a coach.
“There’s no doubt I would be doing it if I hadn’t had a chance to work with those guys early on, because they were all winners,” Ingalls said. “So we won a lot of games and that made it fun, and sometimes you reach a point that you realize you’re a coach, that’s what you are and you don’t know how to do anything else.
“Certainly when you talk about who I’ve got to give credit to, it would be my high school coaches and Gilby and Dennis.”
And while Ingalls’ first stop at Idaho helped him discover a passion for coaching, it was his time at San Diego State that led him to the NFL. Back in 1989, Ingalls worked in San Diego with a young assistant coach named Sean Payton. Payton and Ingalls coached on the Aztec’s offensive staff for three seasons together and formed a friendship, and four years ago, Payton became the head coach of the Saints. When Payton had an opening for a running back’s coach this offseason, Ingalls ended up with his first job in the NFL.
“We remained friends and talked football all the time over the years,” Ingalls said. “I’d go visit him, study what they were doing, and it just worked out this last year that this was the right time to bring me in.”
Now a onetime standout running back from Snohomish is coaching Reggie Bush, one of the league’s most explosive players, and he’s only one win away from coaching in a Super Bowl.
And even though he’s new to New Orleans, Ingalls realizes he is taking part in something special as the city rallies around the Saints like few, if any, other NFL teams do. Since Hurricane Katrina struck the Gulf Coast in 2005, the Saints have held a special meaning to a city still trying to recover, and this year’s run to the NFC championship game has been a memorable experience, Ingalls said.
“It’s unique,” he said. “This is not your normal community and fan base after what happened here four years ago. This community has taken ownership of this team. When we’re winning they believe they’re winning. There’s still a lot of work to do here to get this city back to what it was, but I’ll tell you what, this Sunday in that dome, that’s going to be the loudest place I’ll have ever been in.”
Talk to us
> Give us your news tips.
> Send us a letter to the editor.
> More Herald contact information.
