By MARIO AGUIRRE | STAFF WRITER
Former Grulla assistant Aaron Garcia was appointed by the Rio Grande City ISD school board Tuesday night as the new athletic coordinator/head football coach at Rio Grande City.
Garcia, a native of Rio Grande City, spent the previous two years as a special teams coordinator and defensive assistant under coach Abel Gonzalez III. The Gators posted a 1-9 record in 2014 before improving to 4-6 this past season.
Prior to that, Garcia was the head coach at La Joya Juarez-Lincoln, where he went a combined 11-29 from 2008-2011.
Garcia was recommended by a five-man search committee to the school board and was unanimously approved around 8:10 p.m.
“It took me 19 years to come home, and I say thank you,” Garcia told the school board. “I am a Rattler. This is the only place I wanted to be. I tell our kids, life is about opportunity. Mine is here, and I intend to make the most of it.”
Garcia replaces coach Carlos Longoria, who compiled a 15-28 record from 2011-2015, twice qualifying for the postseason. Longoria was reassigned on Nov. 16 after the Rattlers missed the playoffs for a second straight year.
“Unfortunately, we have to show results in these positions,” Rio Grande City High School principal Ricardo Saenz told The Monitor following Longoria’s reassignment. “We’re hired to do a job, and ultimately it comes down to win-loss records and playoff records. And the past two years we’ve been disappointed. We want to hopefully get back to a place where we could go back (to the postseason).”
Garcia fell short of the playoffs in each of his four seasons at Juarez-Lincoln. In fact, the Huskies didn’t qualify until this past season, eight years after the school opened.
Since his reassignment from Juarez-Lincoln, Garcia spent two seasons as a defensive assistant at Donna High before moving on to Grulla in 2014.
Garcia graduated from RGC in 1988.