By Tom Robinson, NEPASportsNation.com
When word surfaced last month that the Carbondale head football coaching job was opening, Jeff Arthur knew instantly that he would be pursuing the position.
Arthur got his wish, landing his first high school head coaching job when the Carbondale Area School Board voted to appoint him to the position Monday night.
“As soon as I heard it was open, I immediately knew I was going to apply,” said Arthur, who was in attendance for the board’s vote.
One of the top linemen on the 1986 Carbondale team that won an Eastern Conference Northern Division Class B title, Arthur was also one of the leaders of the Chargers baseball team before graduating in 1988.
A Carbondale police officer for more than two decades, Arthur has also coached football for nearly that long, often with multiple responsibilities.
Arthur was a varsity assistant coach, working with the linemen, from 1992 to 2005 and in nine of those seasons also served as the head freshman coach. He spent 14 seasons, many of them while also on the school coaching staff, assisting the Carbondale Blitz youth program. For the last four seasons, Arthur has been the A team (13-and-under) head coach of the youth program, which is now known as the Carbondale Junior Chargers.
“As an assistant, I always knew my role, but I also hoped one day to be head coach,” Arthur said.
Arthur said a strong emphasis on the weight room is a necessity. He hopes to strengthen the cooperative sponsorship with of the sport with Forest City, where some of the current students are former Junior Chargers players that he coached.
On the field, Arthur knows the type of team he hopes to build.
“I just hope the style we adopt is to play tough, be run-oriented and hopefully defensively give different looks with a lot of blitz packages,” Arthur said. “I just want to be aggressive.”
Arthur, who also has spent years as a high school football official and baseball umpire, replaces Carbondale athletic director Larry Gabriel III.
Gabriel resigned in April citing plans to pursue an administrative path in the future.
