Jared Carkuff was announced as the new Cascade Head Football Coach on Wednesday.
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One of Cascade’s own is coming home to fill the recently-opened football head coaching position left in the wake of Coach Jake Tyre recently stepping down.
Jared Carkuff, a three-sport athlete himself for the majority of his high school career at Cascade until he signed with Austin Peay before his senior year in 2011/12 to play baseball, is returning to where it all began 12 years ago.
“We always knew we would make it back home eventually, just had no clue it would be this soon,” Carkuff says as he prepares to take over a program as a head coach for the first time in his career.
He is not some newbie to coaching football – obviously, he wouldn’t get hired for a head coaching job if he was – and the former offensive coordinator at Class 4-A Bluffton High School in Bluffton, South Carolina, brings an explosive offense with him back home to Bell Buckle. For context, it is an offense that averaged 33 PPG while finishing in the top 10 in the state in total offense both seasons that he was there, and he helped spring Bluffton from three wins over five years to back-to-back playoff appearances.
However, his football coaching career didn’t begin in the Palmetto State. It actually began right here in Tennessee, about an hour and 40 minutes west of Cascade over in Centerville at Hickman County High School.
“Both my parents attended Hickman County,” Carkuff explains, “and so as soon as I retired from baseball after numerous surgeries, I went to Hickman County.”
“Football was always the passion, but baseball was always the better path for me,” he continues, “I love baseball, but football was always the passion, so I always knew when I got into coaching it would be for football.”
At Hickman, he was hired as the QB and DB Coach in the fall of 2019, and he was given the duty of being the JV Head Coach as well. However, after the season ended, he received a phone call.
“My father-in-law called and told me to come down to Collins Hill [In Suwanee, Georgia],” Carkuff remembers.
“We got ranked as high as 3rd in the nation and won a state championship [in 2021].”
Carkuff took the job of being the team’s WR Coach, and both seasons he was on staff, the program made it all the way to the state championship game, finishing runners-up in 2020 before winning it all in 2021.
He then received another call in the summer of 2022.
“O-line coach got the head coaching job in Bluffton and told me to come over as his OC,” he says. “We turned the program around from three wins in five years to making the playoffs both years while scoring quite a few points.”
Carkuff is looking forward to implementing his offensive system at Cascade, but also having an impact on every kid’s lives in the smaller, more tight-knit community.
I knew if I was going to be a head coach, I would step down in classifications more for the community part of it, but also to feel comfortable calling my own offense as the head coach,” he says.
Carkuff’s system promises to be a major philosophical shift from the previous years as well.
“What I believe in is a spread system, and the thing about it is it’s all about numbers,” he explains, “You spread the field out and take advantage of sideline to sideline, and if they are going to put numbers closer to the football over the middle you throw to the outside. If they start shifting towards the outside and leave the middle a bit lighter, you run it.”
“So it's not a true air raid system, it’s more so taking advantage of numbers and leverage.”
Carkuff also recognizes the strong culture and roots that have been established and cultivated over the years from Kenny Parker to Jake Tyre.
“Super excited obviously to be home, but also to be taking over a program that already has its roots,” he emphasizes.
“It’s always hard to come into a place and completely change the culture and everything but walkin into a place that is rooted in the weight room, knows how to work hard, and has been coached well by Coach Tyre and his staff, it just makes the transition so much cleaner and better. So I’m really just thankful for how they created the relationship with the community and kept it tight knit.
“I'm thankful for Coach Kenny and Tyre in how they have set me up for success here,” Carkuff says.
Carkuff is set to begin in about three weeks or so on April 8th, and he is extremely excited about the future while understanding it will take everyone moving forward together to string wins together.
“I'm a coach that wants to win, so if I feel like the system that I use isn't going to work, we’ll adjust and change to something that does work,” he says.
“As long as everyone is bought in and moving forward together, with anything, it's going to be successful,” Carkuff concludes.
Success is exactly what the Cascade faithful are hoping to achieve, and Year One of the Jacob Carkuff Era promises to be an exciting one.
