Jason Strunk is in the heart of Texas coaching football at Lubbock High School

FROM THE EXPRESS TIMES

Name: Jason Strunk

Local connection: Northampton Area High School (’95)

Notables: Current head football coach Lubbock (Texas) High School

Offensive quality control graduate assistant Purdue University (2010)

Head football coach Plant City, Fla. (2008-09)

Assistant coach (linebackers) Muhlenberg College (2007)

Assistant coach Northampton Area High School (2000-06)

Assistant coach Nazareth Area High School (1996-98)
Currently resides: Lubbock, Texas
If someone were writing a book about the passion that is high school football, Jason Strunk should be a primary source because he’s been living it his whole life.

For starters, Strunk played football at Northampton Area High School in the mid 1990s and was raised with the tradition of Thanksgiving Day games and all the fall traditions that go with bleeding orange and black.

Strunk departed the Lehigh Valley in the 2008 after many years as an assistant coach to take over a struggling football program in Plant City, Fla. Strunk turned around Plant City, situated in the fertile Interstate 4 football corridor, in such a short time that his blossoming program drew attention from ESPN and other national media outlets.

But when Purdue University came calling with an opening on its coaching staff in late spring of 2010, Strunk, his wife Tracy ( also a Konkrete Kids graduate), and children Mac and Kennedy, packed up and headed to West Lafayette, Ind.

Strunk enjoyed his one year with the Boilermakers but the 20-hour days that college coaches endure convinced him it was more important to continue coaching yet also be able to see his family for more than a few minutes after Saturday’s game each week.

So, the family was on the move again, this time to Lubbock, Texas, where the 35-year-old Strunk currently is the head coach of the Lubbock High School Westerners. Chad Scott, running backs coach at Texas Tech, which is in Lubbock, is a Plant City native and Strunk’s good friend. He helped facilitate Strunk’s hiring at Lubbock, which hasn’t enjoyed a winning season since 1975.

Nonetheless, Strunk is in football heaven.

“I was fortunate to be able to coach at Purdue and it was a great experience; Coach (Danny) Hope had a great staff there,” said Strunk, who used a friendship he fostered with Purdue offensive line coach Shawn Clark to get on the Boilermakers’ staff. “You work like dogs, 18-19 hours a day, but all coaches do and if you love football you really don’t mind it. The college season is a grind and it’s like that in high school, too, but there’s no family time.

“My son Mac is 10 and he’s in his first year of playing football. If I’d have stayed coaching in college — my dream was to coach Division I football — I’d miss all my son’s games. At the end of the season last year we lost to Indiana in overtime and that was a sour note. At that point I said to Tracy, if we ever go back to high school, we’re going to Texas because it’s like Division I football without being in college. It’s where football is king.”

Strunk’s not kidding. The Texas economy may be depressed and facing budget crises, but the good folks of Lubbock saw fit to pass a bond to finance their football teams. The three-phase funding is providing for new practice facilities for each of the city’s four scholastic football programs and $18 million in renovations to the city’s football stadium, which already seats 8,500, has a turf field and Jumbotron scoreboards behind each end zone.

“It’s just a different dynamic down here,” said Strunk, who also serves as Lubbock’s athletic director. “They just spent $5.5 million on our new practice facility. We have a turf practice field with lights, a grass field with lights and even a 60-yard indoor turf facility for when it rains. It’s really like coaching Division I football — without the recruiting. We have a team film room, a weight room, new locker room and I have 18 assistant coaches, who are all teachers.”

When Strunk was hired at Plant City in a whirlwind courtship, he was free to mold a program teeming with Division I athletes but short on discipline and organization.

“They were something like 35-50 in the previous eight years before we got there and the most wins they had in a season was six,” Strunk said. “We were 3-7 our first year. We had good athletes but no structure. We went through a year really incorporating my program.”

Strunk installed a strength conditioning program. He took his team throughout the south to 7-on-7 passing scrimmages, including competitions at Auburn and South Carolina. Suddenly, Plant City athletes were popping up on recruiting services to the surprise of everyone.

“The spring before I left Plant City, there were 30 Division I coaches in attendance at our spring game,” Strunk said. “We had one of the top tight ends in the country and our quarterback was getting looked at and he was just going into his junior season. It makes my job difficult on Saturdays as to what (college) games to watch because we got guys playing all over the place -- Michigan State, Wake Forest, Notre Dame. The quarterback I left there committed to Cincinnati.”

Strunk believes he can orchestrate a similar turnaround at Lubbock, and he’s certain that once he does the Westerners will be good for a long time to come.

“One of the problems was the schools here didn’t have dedicated feeder programs, but our executive athletic director Mark Ball has got it fixed," Strunk said. "We now have two middle school teams who feed just our program, and we have two freshman teams and a JV team.”

Though Lubbock High has started 0-3, its losses have been to quality opponents and the scores haven’t been as lopsided as in the past. Strunk is a disciple of a no-huddle, fast-paced offense and his goal is to run 100 plays a game. Not coincidentally, Strunk keeps in contact with another Northampton grad, Rob Melosky, who is the Mad Hatter behind a similar attack at Nazareth Area High School.

“I just talked to Rob earlier tonight,” Strunk said one night last week. “We run a lot of the same stuff. He’s done a fantastic job at Nazareth and I tried to follow Rob’s model when I went to Florida.”

Strunk said he’s received nothing but positive feedback from the Lubbock community and school administration.

“The first game of the season we ran 85 plays and had the other team gassed; it was a two-possession game but we didn’t score three times inside their 5-yard line,” Strunk said. “We’re 0-3 but there’s a huge difference from last year when they were 0-10 and barely had 1,300 yards of offense. We have almost that much in three games.”

Though Strunk’s more than 1,000 miles away from the Lehigh Valley, he’s kept abreast of what’s happening on Friday nights by Melosky and niece, Ashley Osman.

“She’s a senior at Easton High School and she keeps us posted on what’s going on with Easton football,” Strunk said. “She’s a part of Rover Nation.”

Express-Times fans can keep tabs on Strunk, too, not just by finding his scores Friday night on the internet by also through a midweek report.

“Let them know I have my own TV and radio show and on Wednesday nights at 8:30 I’m on Double T 104.3 FM,” Strunk said.

Maybe one week he can bring on Melosky as a guest and they can argue the merits of Pennsylvania vs. Texas high school football.

"Catching Up With" is a weekly online feature that runs Sundays on lehighvalleylive.com. The subjects are former local high school or collegiate athletes who no longer live in the region. If you have an idea about an athlete you would like to see profiled, send an e-mail to kgary@express-times.com.


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