Mascheck Era Begins This Week at Flatonia
When the Flatonia school board decided to hire Brent Mascheck as their new football coach and athletic director last month, they knew they were getting a fighter.
After all, he’s been a head coach for 18 years with a reputation of having teams that don’t get outworked by anybody.
But when he walked into his introductory board meeting, Flatonia folks might have thought Mascheck was taking that fighter reputation a little too literally.
His first impression to many in Flatonia was with a black eye, 14 stitches in his face and broken cheek bones.
“I got a lot of texts of congratulations, but the people who saw my picture were also asking me what happened?” Mascheck said.
Two weeks after initially interviewing for the Flatonia job Mascheck was in a car accident (not his fault, he was quick to point out).
But now he’s healed and ready to officially begin his first day on the job at Flatonia this Wednesday.
And he wouldn’t mind if that fighter reputation stayed around for he and his new Bulldogs teams.
“We’re not going to be afraid of anybody,” said Mascheck, who is a Shiner native and won a state title there as a player. It was getting closer to his hometown and that of his wife Kim (who is from Yoakum) which led Mascheck to resign from West Columbia in December and pursue this job.
But with a bunch of key seniors graduating from last year’s Bulldog team that went 11-2, there’s a lot of work ahead for Mascheck.
“I told them tradition never graduates,” he said. “If you work hard and are fundamentally sound, you can win a lot of football games.”
And that’s what Mascheck has done as a head coach at Columbus, Tidehaven and most recently West Columbia, compiling a 93-96 overall record.
His 2007 Columbus team broke a 10-year district title drought. His 2014 Tidehaven team went 7-4, the program’s best record in 18 years. In 4A West Columbia, he made the playoffs three of the last four seasons.
That history of leadership helped him rise to the top from a field of more than 70 applicants for the Flatonia job.
“I’m so excited that Flatonia ISD put their faith in me. It’s a great community, great school district,” Mascheck said. “I’ve met the kids and they are hard-nosed, hard working kids.
“I’ve really enjoyed working at small schools where you really get to know the kids on a personal level. I’m trying to build on what Coach Freytag did (Mascheck’s predecessor Chris Freytag coached the Bulldogs the last 13 years and went to at least the second round of the playoffs each of the last eight seasons) and add my own twists.”
Mascheck said offensively he likes to run the Gun-T (an offense with Wing-T principles, but run out of the shotgun formation) and defensively plans to run a 4-3.
The Mascheck era at Flatonia officially begins Wednesday.