Minnick to miss Matadors’ game tonight against Mesa
AWC coach attending to family matters in Indiana
For the first time in 11 years, Arizona Western will play a football game without Tom Minnick on the sideline. Minnick, the Matadors’ 11th-year head coach, will miss tonight’s home game against Mesa while attending to a family emergency in his home state of Indiana.
It will be the first game Minnick has missed in his head-coaching career.
He arrived in Indiana on Thursday, and does not know when he will return to Yuma.
Minnick said that in his absence, offensive coordinator Michael Orthmann and defensive coordinator
7 p.m. today, Veterans Mem. Stad.
Jerry Dominguez will split the head-coaching duties, though Dominguez does have the title of associate head coach.
“They’ll both do a good job, they’ve been doing it long enough,” Minnick said of Orthmann, who’s in his 10th year at AWC, and Dominguez, who’s in his 14th. “I’ve talked to (Dominguez) more about stuff I do with equipment, what to wear, next week’s travel plans (to Glendale).”
It’s been a difficult past week for Minnick, who coached through kidney stones during last Saturday’s 16-13 victory over Eastern Arizona. He spent Saturday night after the game at the hospital, returned to work in a limited capacity Monday, but was out Tuesday and Wednesday due to the kidney stones.
He said Friday in a phone interview that even if the family emergency hadn’t arose, he’d be “50-50” to coach tonight.
Tonight is the No. 9-ranked Matadors’ Western States Football League opener — last week’s game against EAC was nonleague — and they enter it with a 2-1 record overall.
Mesa (2-1), which is unranked but did receive votes in this week’s NJCAA Poll, is coming off a 52-35 loss to Scottsdale. The Thunderbirds beat Phoenix (44-18) and Glendale (56-19) in their first two games.
AWC has never lost to Mesa under Minnick, though a 2013 victory was forfeited.