Earlier this year, Baltimore Ravens head coach John Harbaugh wrote about the importance of high school football coaches. Wednesday, new San Francisco 49ers head coach Jim Tomsula told a media day gathering that he and his family attend high school football games on Friday night.
“We get in the car at 6:30 or 7 in the fall and just look for lights,” Tomsula told those that attended the USA Football/MaxPreps Media Day at Levi’s Stadium. “We get out, pay and go to the snack bar and that’s our dinner. I can usually figure out one of the teams because it says so on the scoreboard. But it really doesn’t matter.”
Tomsula quotes from SFGate.com story….
“This is huge, man. This is high school football and this is your senior year. It’s huge and exciting and it should get you fired up. It should be the last thing you think about before you fall asleep and the first thing you think about when you wake up in the morning. It’s huge.”
“You are playing football at the greatest time of your life. It’s high school football on Friday night. It’s the perfect time to play, so enjoy the heck out of it.”
Tomsula is a western Pennsylvania native. At 5-10, 240-pounds he played defensive end at Steel Valley High School where he was all-conference, according to media reports.
Tomsula’s high school coach George Novak, who is now the head coach at Woodland Hills, told the Pittsburgh Post-Gazette, “He was undersized, but he was a great player.” Tomsula’s coaching career actually began under Novak at Woodland Hills. He served as a volunteer assistant in 1990.
After high school, Tomsula went to Division I-AA Middle Tennessee State to play defensive end, but after his freshman year he transferred to Catawba, a Division II school.
