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Crater tabs Cable as coach By KRIS HENRY Crater High didn't have to look far in its search for a head varsity football coach. Then again, with expected budget restraints, the school really couldn't afford to expand its horizons. Fortunately for Crater Athletic Director Dan Speasl, the right man for the job was under his nose all along. After five months of speculation on the direction the Comets would take following the resignation of former head football coach Randy Heath, Speasl turned to defensive coordinator Rich Cable on Thursday. Cable, 35, had been an assistant to Heath the past three years and is a business teacher at the high school. "Because of the budget crunch we're all going to be under, we felt like we couldn't go outside the school and advertise the job," said Speasl. "We just didn't feel that would be fair to some of the other teachers in the district who may be in their first years and we may have to rift with down the road." That said, Speasl is confident in the selection of Cable and merely considers it a bonus that Crater didn't have to go outside its own walls in these belt-tightening times. "He's very energetic and has good ideas to bring to the program and the kids like him," said Speasl, "so he had the whole package we felt we needed to go with." Cable has 14 years of coaching experience but will be taking the sidelines for the first time as a head varsity coach this fall. Prior to his work at Crater, Cable was defensive coordinator at Parkrose High in Portland for three years and at Lindbergh High in Seattle following a year of graduate assistant coaching at Eastern Oregon University. "It's an exciting opportunity for me," said Cable, who also played cornerback at Eastern Oregon and was a team captain. "To be given an opportunity to show what I can do, especially in the Southern Oregon Conference, is pretty exciting." Cable inherits a program that went 8-28 in four seasons under Heath, including a 7-21 mark in the SOC. Crater finished 0-9 and 1-8 in 2000 and 2001, respectively. "There are two things I can guarantee are going to be different in the program, mostly because they are two things we can control," Cable said. "We're going to be one of the best conditioned teams in the league - and the last three years I wouldn't be able to say that - and secondly, we're going to come out and hit people." Being a defensive-minded coach, Cable said aggressiveness will be his team's forte on both sides of the ball. "As opposed to finesse and trickery like we've seen the past few years," he said, "my scheme's going to be more straightforward, and we're going to preach fundamentals and hard-nosed football." Cable said he'd like his team to mirror that of the Crater wrestling team which, under head coach Greg Haga, has been a force on the local and state levels, due in part to Haga's concentration on discipline and conditioning. "I think the main thing we want to change in the program is to have more mental and physical toughness," said Cable, who has been an assistant under Haga the past three years, "and that's something that wrestling team has each year. There's just a look those kids have in the winter that I want them to have in the fall." Cable expects to meet with current and former coaches who have been involved in the Crater football program as soon as possible to shore up his staff of assistants. "I think there are definitely some people at Crater who have good football knowledge who aren't being used," said Cable, "and the staff that we've had, there are some excellent coaches there as well." Reach reporter Kris Henry at 776-4488, or e-mail [email protected] Mail Tribune Home | Ottaway Newspapers, Inc. | Dow Jones & Co., Inc. | Privacy | Contact Us Copyright � 2001 Mail Tribune, Inc.