SEATTLE — Tyrone Willingham didn’t have to look far to find his new running backs coach.
The right man for the job, Washington’s head coach decided, was a familiar face to the Willingham family, and a well-known name to high school football fans in the state.
Willingham announced Wednesday the hiring of Skyline High School head coach Steve Gervais to coach Washington’s running backs, rounding out a coaching staff that also includes a new defensive coordinator and tight ends/special teams coach hired this offseason.
The Washington job will be the first college coaching job for Gervais, who last season coached Skyline to its third state Class 3A championship. Willingham’s son, Nathaniel, was a lineman on that team.
“Obviously living in the area where Steve coached, it was easy to kind of watch him and see things and watch his program for a couple of years,” said Willingham. “And during that process I saw what I thought was an excellent coach, a coach that serviced his young men well as well as being very successful. Having a son in the program made that even easier to see and to see the fine points and the attention to detail and all those things.”
Gervais, 54, began his coaching career as an assistant at Eatonville High School in 1976. As the head coach at Eatonville, he won three Class 1A state titles before taking head coaching jobs at Gig Harbor, Rogers and Skyline. He has a 244-83 record in 31 seasons, and has won six state Championships and 15 league titles.
For Gervais, whose youngest son Riley is a senior at Skyline, the timing couldn’t have been better to make the jump to the college ranks. Willingham first thought of Gervais when Washington running backs coach Trent Miles was hired to be the head coach at Indiana State, and the two sat down in late December to discuss the possibility of Gervais coming to Washington.
“We had a casual conversation in late December, and I told him at that time that I was very interested if that opportunity may come,” said Gervais. “My last son graduated, and I had a conviction that I wanted to coach through my last son Riley. At this time in my life, I think it’s a tremendous opportunity, and it’s a new challenge in my life, and both of those went together very well. I think it’s something that I’m ready for and I’m very excited about.”
Riley Gervais is expected to walk on at Washington as a linebacker.
Gervais has made a name for himself in the high school ranks by developing successful quarterbacks in pass-happy offenses, but Willingham said Gervais’ overall knowledge of the game will make him a good fit.
“With his background, he’s seen a lot of things and done a lot of things, and there are a lot of areas he could potentially coach,” Willingham said. “But I felt like this is one that he’d be able to fit in.”
With his ties to the area, Gervais is expected to recruit in Washington as well as California, though Willingham said the specifics had not been worked out as of yet. The Huskies have two players — receiver Tony Chidiac and offensive tackle Cody Habben — who played for Gervais at Skyline. The Spartans also have several current players, including quarterback Jake Heaps and receiver Gino Simone, that Gervais may end up recruiting in the future.
Gervais said he would have been happy to stay at Skyline had this opportunity not come up, and that he would not have moved to the college ranks had the job not been local.
“I was not going to leave the area,” he said. “It was an opportunity with the program having a couple of openings that if there was a fit, it would be a great opportunity, but I had no desire to move out of this area.”
Gervais is the first high school coach Willingham has hired, but in the end, Willingham said, finding the best fit for his program was what mattered, regardless of the coach’s background.
“This is the first,” he said. “I’ve looked at some at other places. You just want to make sure it’s the right fit, that’s all. Because a good coach is a good coach.”
While the view might be different from the sideline, Gervais will hardly feel out of place spending his Saturdays at Husky Stadium this fall.
“My son and Nathaniel Willingham are the very best of friends, so we’ve gotten to know Nathaniel very well and we have supported Nathaniel and his family,” Gervais said. “I think we may have missed one or two home games in the past three years.”
Contact Herald Writer John Boyle at jboyle@heraldnet.com. For more on University of Washington sports, check out the Huskies blog at heraldnet.com/huskiesblog
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