Lanphier passes on Creviston

For the second time in just over a month, Routt athletic director and head football coach Barry Creviston was passed over for the head football coaching position at Springfield Lanphier High School.

In the past month, the District 186 school offered the job to one candidate, rescinded the offer, and has now offered it to another candidate, Lanphier assistant coach Steve Buecker.

“The whole thing has been stressful on me, my wife, my family, and the kids, especially, here at school,” Creviston said. “I’m just happy for it to be over, and we can focus on ’08, and we’re still going to have a good team here at Routt.”

Creviston applied for the job in early January, but the District 186 School Board offered the job to Flint (Mich.) Southwestern’s Gary Lee.

But Lee, who was suspended for a game last season and whose team had to forfeit three games after playing two students who had recently pleaded guilty to felonies, never turned in all his paperwork, missing a Feb. 19 deadline to do so.

The school board began searching for another candidate, and looked most closely at Creviston and Buecker, both of whom originally applied for the job.

“They said that after all this stuff that’s gone on, we’re going to stay in-house, and Coach Buecker is the choice,” Creviston said of the phone call he received Monday afternoon. “It was kind of a sigh of relief because I was kind of looking for a sign of what to do. I was still torn on what to do, and they pretty much made the decision for me.”

Creviston has a career coaching record of 37-33, including a 34-18 mark at Routt over the past five seasons. He has led the Rockets to the playoffs the past four years.

The coach said his desire to seek employment elsewhere has been a combination of two factors: his wife is employed in Springfield as a doctor of physical therapy at SportsCare, and he wants to get into the public teachers’ retirement system. “The job here at Routt, for me, is wonderful,” Creviston said. “The kids are great, the community support is great. I enjoy football, volleyball, baseball, basketball, softball. This is what I enjoy doing.

“I enjoy being around the kids. I enjoy good athletics, and that’s what we have here. It’s an enjoyable job,” the coach continued. “But in the big picture, at some point I need to get into the public school system to get into the teacher’s retirement system.”