Press Release!

You heard it here first.... this is an article from Friday's Valley Cronicle:


Mustangs get new football coach; McRitchie leaves for MSJC
By VALERIE DETWILER/The Valley Chronicle
Published: Friday, April 24, 2009 5:32 PM CDT

Jason Thornburg is taking over as head coach of West Valley High School’s football team.Thornburg has been the “right-hand man” of Scott McRitchie since McRitchie came on as head coach in 2005.“I’ve been waiting for the right time for a head coaching position,” Thornburg said. “I’m not going anywhere. I want to be that head coach who has been here for 20 years.”McRitchie won’t be going far — he has accepted a position as Mt. San Jacinto College’s linebacker coach.
“It was a big loss for the school for Scott to leave,” Thornburg said.He said that one of McRitchie’s requests was to have Thornburg take over for him when he left.“I feel like I’m a true Mustang, and it’s exciting to get a job where you really want to be and you know the kids,” Thornburg said.He said he doesn’t have a coaching style yet, but that he plans to develop one that’s right for the Mustangs.“I think that’s something you develop over time,” he said.Thornburg comes from a football family. His father was a head coach, and he has a brother that is a head coach.He said he’s going to take elements from the coaches he knows and respects to make his own program run smoothly.Thornburg said he plans to use some of what McRitchie implemented in discipline, some of what former West Valley head coach Pete Duffy taught about competition, and aspects of his father’s and brother’s coaching standpoints.“I’ll take a little from everybody,” Thornburg said.Thornburg said he’s not afraid to ask questions about things he may not know.“I can ask my father and my brother, and I’ll bounce things off of the local coaches around here. I’m not scared to ask or say I don’t know,” he said.He said he believes he has a good relationship with each of the surrounding high school’s coaches.He played football in college and coached at Southern Utah University with newly appointed Tahquitz head football coach Mike Schroeder. He said he also has a positive relationship with Hemet coach Andy Boynton and San Jacinto coach Bill Powell.Thornburg got a taste of head coaching when he stepped in during McRitchie’s absence after a motorcycle accident left McRitchie injured and unable to coach last spring.Thornburg said the school’s transition from one head coach to another should be a smooth one since he has been a part of West Valley’s football program for five years.“I’ve known these kids for a long time,” Thornburg said. “It makes it more exciting when you have a good relationship with everyone and everyone on staff.”Thornburg said the San Jacinto Valley can possibly look forward to round robin-games on Wednesday nights this summer among West Valley, San Jacinto, Hemet, and Tahquitz.“We’ve talked about doing a little round-robin thing for a month this summer. We’d just rotate through each team, and each school would host one time,” Thornburg said.He said he hasn’t talked it over with San Jacinto coach Bill Powell yet, but the idea is in the works.McRitchie said he has been interesting in coaching at a community college for some time.“I guess I’d always felt that I’d be intrigued by an opportunity at the JC (junior college) level, and I certainly felt like I needed to consider this opportunity at this point in my career,” McRitchie said.He said that, after meeting with Mt. San Jacinto head football coach Casey Mazzota, he felt like the philosophies Mazzota was implementing at the college went hand-in-hand with his own.McRitchie will continue to teach at West Valley High School and said he’ll make himself available to Thornburg.“I’ll be here to help him with anything in the transition. I always have a desire to see this program do well, and I’ll certainly be supporting it in any way that I can,” McRitchie said.

here is the link to the actual article:
http://www.thevalleychronicle.com/articles/2009/04/24/sports/doc49f237a69fee0561861263.txt