JOYCE – It takes more than one season to define former Crescent High School head football coach Gary Kautz.
After all, his was a career of consistency.
For 29 straight seasons, from 1968 through 1996, he patrolled the Logger sidelines.
His teams had a combined 222-106 record and 16 playoff appearances.
In that same time frame the Loggers suffered through only two losing seasons, one of which came in his first year in 1968.
Yet for years, another, more dubious, distinction followed him around.
Kautz consistently took his squad deep into the playoffs, but his teams always came up a game or two short of the ultimate prize – a state title.
Four times his Loggers lost the B-8 state championship game.
Five other times their season ended in the state semifinals, the last of which – a 52-50 defeat at the hands of the eventual state champs, Pateros, in 1995 – was the most painful.
“The team that we played, we knew they were good,” class of ’97 linebacker Garth Findley said.
“That was pretty much the championship, and everybody thought that.”
Even with another heartbreaking loss, Kautz’ coaching career – which also included head positions in boys basketball from 1968-1984 and track from 1969-1982 – could only be viewed as a success based on his records.
Still, Kautz found his lawn decorated with “For Sale” signs after 1995’s two-point loss. He got the same treatment after other big losses.
“People were just getting pissed,” Kautz said in his usual deep monotone.
Messages left on Kautz’s answering machine were, he said, “unfit for ears.”
“You heard comments,” Crescent athletic director Dave Bingham said. “There were people that were very willing to say it was Gary Kautz’s fault.”
As a result, Bingham said, “Gary felt a lot of personal pressure to finally deliver.”
