Imperial hires David Shaw as head football coach
IMPERIAL — For the first time in 13 years, there will be a new face of the Imperial High School football program.
At its regularly scheduled meeting on Thursday the Imperial Unified School District board confirmed the previously provisional hiring of David Shaw as varsity head ball coach. Shaw fills the seat vacated by Kerry Legarra, previously the longest-tenured coach in the Imperial Valley League, in a move that District Superintendent Bryan Thomason characterized as one typical of organizations that change and grow over time.
“Coach Legarra was here for 13 years, and he did a great job. We’re real appreciative of all of his work — we’ve had a great program — but the district felt a change was needed at this time,” Thomason said on Friday.
According to Thomason, Shaw was selected from a pool of seven candidates who applied when the job became available in mid-January by a select panel — composed of himself, Imperial High Principal Joe Apodaca and Athletic Director Victor Cruz
— which then forwarded its recommendation to the IUSD board for approval.
Shaw is, of course, not actually all that new a face. He’s a regular hometown hero of sorts, an IHS Class of 1994 grad whose athletic success in three varsity sports came in spite of a right hand missing since birth (his story graced the pages of USA Today), and he’s stayed plenty familiar in the years since.
From 2005-2006, and again from 2008-2012, Shaw was the head football coach at Calipatria High, notably piloting the Hornets through the fondly-remembered Cedric Thompson years. He finished with a winning record in five out of seven seasons. In the seven seasons since his abrupt departure ahead of the 2013 campaign, the Hornets have finished .500 or better just once.
Shaw’s exit from Calipatria coincided with his taking a new job as an assistant principal at his alma mater — a position he held for almost six years before scooting back up to Calipatria to take over as principal of Bill Young Middle School there.
While assistant principal at IHS, Shaw joined Legarra’s staff as an assistant coach, with many in the rumor mill viewing him as an heir-apparent, if and when Legarra’s time with the team came to a close.
Thomason acknowledged the bonds Shaw has formed during his many years of living and working in the Valley gave him a major leg up on his outof-town competition in the quest to fill a very prominent and community-centric position.
“His connections to Imperial and Imperial High School were invaluable to his selection. How he’s worked with parents and staff and students is impeccable,” Thomason said. “The contributions he’s made and the relationships he’s made were all factored in, and were ultimately why he was hired.”
Thomason said the hiring panel’s main criteria for a new head coach were “knowing Xs and Os, obviously” and being able to serve as “the face of the program … and ultimately have a very good relationship within our community,” indicating that Shaw was “an all-around candidate” in those respects.
Both Thomason and Cruz expressed optimism that Shaw could build something lasting and generative in Imperial.
“We always try to build programs here. We’re not trying to cycle through one guy to the next,” Cruz said.
The hiring panel was particularly pleased with Shaw’s plans to step up youth football outreach.
“One of the things that really stood out for David in the interview is that he really took an interest in developing a program that would reach out to the [youth football] programs and look at doing football camps and promoting the program from the younger levels and running that up through the freshman, JV and varsity levels so that we have that continuity in the program,” Thomason said. “We have done that in the past, but that’s something that can be done even more, and that’s something he mentioned that was really appealing to us. … [Reaching] down to the youth football level and have a continuum there so that the kids can aspire to be a varsity football player.”
With his hire official, the expectation is that Shaw will take up the varsity coach’s traditional offseason duties immediately.
“David’s hitting the ground running. He knew last week that he was the No. 1 candidate, pending board approval, so he’s already started trying to get a staff together,” Thomason said. “He knows the booster club and all those people. … He knows all the players and can get things organized so that, hopefully, we don’t miss a beat.”