New Haven Register (New Haven, CT)
Jennifer Stango Garzone blazing a football coaching trail, with humor and integrity
She played soccer, basketball and softball at Sacred Heart High of Waterbury and at Post University. For 11 years, she played semi-pro football at every position except kicker.
Jennifer Stango Garzone coaches girls basketball and softball at Wolcott Tech and for seven years has been an assistant with the Wolcott Tech football team that morphed into the MCW United co-op program with Housatonic Valley Regional and Wamogo-Litchfield.
Garzone not only is qualified to become the first female high school football head coach in Connecticut history, she understands the art of leading both young men and women.
“Yes, there are differences,” she said. “It depends on the sport and their experience and background. But at the end of the day kids are kids.
They want structure. They want challenges. They want to be successful. You need to build their trust.
“I will say this: Female athletes who wear mouthguards take good care of them. They keep them in a case, keep them clean. The guys I’ve had, if that mouthguard falls off on the bus floor and they find it a week later, it’s going right back in. I can’t explain it. I have seen it.”
We nearly forgot. Garzone has the requisite sense of humor, too.
As it grew clearer last fall that Jamie Coty, who founded the Wolcott Tech program in 2007, was going to make it his final year, Garzone knew what she wanted. The posting went up in November. She applied. This past week, she found out officially she was hired as MCW United coach. Although a few women have been head high school football coaches, Garzone is believed to be the only in the U.S. right now.
Garzone applied several years ago for the head coaching job at O’Brien Tech in Ansonia. She knew she wasn’t ready.
She honed her craft under Coty. She learned under