WARDSVILLE - It might be intimidating for a football coach to take over a program when the previous two coaches have won state championships.
A man who spent 22 years in the Air Force isn't most people.
Terry Walker, a retired lieutenant colonel, was introduced Wednesday at the new head football coach of the Blair Oaks Falcons. He takes over the reins of a team that won a state title in 2004 under Ted LePage and another in 2006 under Brad Drehle, who resigned in February to take the head job at Waynesville High School.
"I'm not afraid of high expectations," Walker said. "As a fighter pilot in the Air Force, I can tell you the expectations were no higher than they are here at Blair Oaks High School. So I'm used to that type of environment.
"I certainly value the importance of high-school athletics and what kind of impact they can have on a kid, but at the end of the day, it's not life or death. It's still just a Friday night football game. Now, we're going to play it with extreme vigor and relentlessness, but it still is just a game."
Walker, a 1985 graduate of Jefferson City High School who's relatively new to coaching, played two years as a starting linebacker at the University of Missouri before starting the next two seasons as the Air Force Academy.
Then came a number of different postings that saw he and wife, Cindy, a 1985 graduate of Helias, moving to, in order: Enid, Okla.; Korea; Panama City, Fla.; Japan; Panama City again; Dayton, Ohio; Hampton, Va.; before ending up back in Enid. Retirement brought the couple and their three sons, Dillon, Jake and Jackson, back to Jefferson City.
"I really enjoyed moving, but I'm not sorry I'm not going to have to move for this job," Walker said with a smile.
Walker added he was drawn to the idea of teaching and coaching once he retired. He's also been hired to teach math at Blair Oaks Middle School.
Walker was a graduate assistant coach at Air Force from 1988-90 and was then out of coaching until he spent the previous two years as an assistant with the Jefferson City Jays. He said when he decided coaching was something he wanted to do, it made sense to come back home to get a crash course.
"I came back to Jeff City knowing full well that at some point in time I was going to want to pursue being a head coach," he said. "The reason I chose Jeff City was because of the natural ties there. Certainly I knew (Jays head coach) Ted (LePage), certainly I knew (previous head coaches Pete) Adkins and (Ron) Cole, and I knew that in order for me to learn at the quickest rate possible, I needed to be exposed to all three of those individuals.
"Did I plan on pursuing (a head-coaching job) after my second year? Probably not. Was the opportunity presented and I felt it was too good to pass up? Most definitely."
Blair Oaks superintendent Jim Jones, who was on the search committee for the opening along with high school principal Gary Verslues and athletic director Ryan Fick, said Walker was the clear choice. The school had 22 applicants, with that group being narrowed to five. Those five had interviews lasting three-plus hours each, with it then narrowed to three who were asked back for another round of interviews.
"We weren't just going to hire a person who was going to be a football coach here, he had to be our No. 1 candidate for math, too," Jones said. "So he didn't just interview against 22 people in football, he was interviewing against another five folks that were brought in for interviews for our middle-school math job. So he won two jobs.
"What we were trying to do is to find a great coach first for approximately 60 young men, and then a great leader and teacher for 1,149 other students. Our responsibility wasn't just to those 60, but to the bigger piece."
Jones added competition for the job was intense.
"We had some outstanding candidates out of those 20-plus candidates that we had," he said. "And we brought in five very good candidates who, if they're not going to be a great head football coach here, are going to be a great head football coach somewhere, some day."
The Falcons went 97-22 in nine years under Drehle following a five-season span in which LePage went 48-13.
"We are extremely excited to find a guy with the character Terry Walker possesses," Fick said. "His past experiences in the game of football and his time of serving our country in the U.S. Air Force have prepared him for this opportunity.
"The Blair Oaks community is fortunate to have coach Walker as our next football coach to build upon the tradition that has been established."
Walker said he will quickly try to impart on his players a few ideas he valued as a player and value as a coach.
"They're extremely simple," he said. "One is just understanding what it means to play hard. The second thing is just understanding what it means to be tough, both mentally and physically. Blair Oaks has demonstrated those things in the past and has done it very successfully. I'm going to challenge them to do it better.
"It's not anything earth-shattering. I'm not going to generate a new offense or a new defense. We're going to be relatively simple, we're just going to try to do it really, really, really well."