Kinsinger takes over program at CMS
Matt Kinsinger is finally getting the break he has been searching for.
The longtime assistant to Lake Hamilton head coach Tommy Gilleran is the new head football coach for Cutter Morning Star. Kinsinger replaces T.C. Shamel, who is the new offensive coordinator at Fountain Lake after a decade of leading the Eagles.
Kinsinger has been the defensive coordinator for the Wolves for the past three seasons, moving to the school when Gilleran was hired as the team’s head coach. The 43-yearold coach was the linebackers coach under Gilleran for three years at Fountain Lake before taking the same position at Lakeside for the
2016 football season.
“The opportunity to become a head coach is becoming more and more difficult here in the state of Arkansas, without having current head coaching experience,” Kinsinger said. “It seems like there’s what I call a coaching carousel, where one coach leaves one place but another head coach gets hired there. Then you’ve got out-of-state guys coming in from Oklahoma, Missouri, Texas, Tennessee, taking some head jobs up, so at some point in time you just have to make a decision to take a job.”
While he has applied for other open positions in the past, he was a bit apprehensive about applying for the job at CMS.
“The opportunity at Cutter came open kind of unexpectedly, and because of the timing being that we’re kind of late,” he explained. “Usually these things are happening in April, May, so I just didn’t want to put Tommy in a bad situation or the next guy up, so I kind of dragged my feet a little bit on on moving forward. … It ended up being something that I pursued, and Tommy encouraged me to continue with the pursuit of that.”
CMS high school principal and acting athletic director Matt Carter said that there were just under 20 who applied for the position.
“It’s a good job,” he said. “A lot of people respect us, I feel like. … We had some good candidates, too. It wasn’t just a bunch of candidates. We had some good candidates. I
felt like there was five or six people that we interviewed for the job that would have done a good job. We just felt like — we’re very lucky to get him, I’ll say that.”
Kinsinger played at Slippery Rock, an NCAA Division II program in Pennsylvania, before spending nine seasons in the Arena Football League and getting into coaching on the high school level. This will be his first time to be the offensive playcaller.
“That’ll be a little bit different for me moving forward, but I’m excited about the challenge,” he said, noting that he plans to switch the team from the Spread to the Wing T offense. “I’ve been with Tommy running the Wing T for years, and we’ll continue that there at Cutter. The thing about a defensive coordinator is you have to play offensive coordinator every week with somebody else’s offense. You kind of get used to, as a defensive guy, you know what’s hard to defend; you know what hurts you.”
With the district upgrading facilities, including the possibility of upgrading their football facilities in the near future, Carter anticipates that Kinsinger will be a good fit.
“I think it is a good opportunity for somebody, you know, like him to get in there and put his stamp on the program and build himself up a resume and also build our program up,” he explained.
Kinsinger said that he feels that CMS is “on the upswing.”
“They were having a hard time, and there was talks about even closing the school at some time based on financial hardships, but they’re doing something right over there,” he said. “They’re building a new school. They have got plans in place for a whole new football field and facility that in the next couple of years that’s something they want to make happen there and put in a turf field and redo everything. So they’ve got plans, and I think they’re doing the right thing over there, and they’re starting to attract some more kids. So, it’s a very promising situation, and just to get the opportunity to stay here in Garland County helps because I’ve got a wife who’s a teacher at Fountain Lake currently, and
I’ve got three little kids.
“My rule has always been as a coach is I don’t want to go to a school where my wife doesn’t want to work and where I don’t want my kids to go. Cutter fits that bill. I definitely don’t have any problem with my kids going there and my wife working there, so I finally decided to go ahead and pursue the job, and that’s what got me to where I’m at today.”
Kinsinger is married to Andrea, and they have three children, Zeke, 5, Teagan, 3, and Timothy, 2.