Gary Durchik
From Wikipedia, the free encyclopedia
Gary Durchik (Born 1944) is a Canadian football coach who is currently the head coach of the Edmonton Wildcats of the Prairie Football Conference, which itself is part of the Canadian Junior Football League (CJFL).
[edit] Biography
A Hall of Fame athlete at Mentor High School, he was a tight end at Miami University from 1963-1965. He got his first head coaching job in 1969 at the young age of 25. He coached the Chillicothe High School Cavaliers for four seasons before returning to the Miami RedHawks in 1973 as an assistant. In his only season with the RedHawks, the team had an undefeated 11-0 season. Miami finished the year with the 17th overall ranking and defeated the Florida Gators 16-7 in the Tangerine Bowl. This season also began a 11 year relationship between head coach Bill Mallory and Durchik.
From 1974-1978 Durchik was Mallory's Offensive Line Coach with the Colorado Buffaloes [1]. In five seasons at Boulder the Buffaloes had a 35-21-1 record, appearing in two bowl games, both losses. He was an assistant coach for Gary Moeller for one year 1979 ath the University of Illinois before joining forces again with Coach Mallory at Northern Illinois, where he was the Huskies Offensive Coordinator from 1980-1983. After a brief stint as interim head coach during the off-season between the 1983 and 1984 college football seasons, he was a finalist for the Head Coaching Job at NIU to succeed Coach Mallory but decided to head to the Canadian Football League when Lee Corso got the Head Job for the Huskies.
Durchik's next coaching position was as the Offensive Line Coach for Montreal Concordes. Durchik replaced head coach Joe Galat for the final two games of the 1985 season, winning both. He defeated the Ottawa Rough Riders 30-20 in the East Semi-Final. He returned to coach the team to a 4-14 season the following year. [2]
From 1987-1990 he was Offensive Line Coach for the Edmonton Eskimos. In 1987, the Eskimos defeated the Toronto Argonauts 38-26 in the 75th Grey Cup. Durchik's second Grey Cup appearance as a coach was a 50-11 loss to the Winnipeg Blue Bombers in the 78th Grey Cup.
In 2002 he was named head coach of the Edmonton Wildcats. In 2006, he led the team to the Canadian Bowl.
|
|||||
