New Tartan Football Coach Creates a Gridiron ‘Buzz’

The recent hiring of head coach Tim Murtha has created a buzz around the football program, the school's athletic director said.

Murtha accepted Tartan’s head coach position last week, bringing more than 15 years of experience to the Titans’ sideline. He takes over for Darin Glazier, who left to become the head coach at Park High School.

Murtha, a district employee for more than a decade, is no stranger to Tartan’s student athletes. He has coached boys and girls basketball, the b-squad football team and every position on the varsity football program in the past—most recently serving as offensive coordinator under Glazier.

“He has a true love for this community,” Activities Director Adrian Moore. “He has a knowledge of the community and the kids here, because he has coached before. He’s a great guy who is ready and enthusiastic about coaching.”

Murtha will be taking over a team that is coming off of a “decent” season—finishing with a 6-4 record last fall before losing to Stillwater in the second round of the section 2AAAAA playoffs—and hope to springboard off of that success, Moore said.

“The goal is to continue to do well in every game, be competitive and have kids with good character,” he said. “Of course you want to win games, but what is most important to me is that the kids continue to develop and grow as individuals heading to the next level.”

With that in mind, Moore said he was looking for a coach who was adamant about making sure student athletes get their schooling done and are held accountable to academic standards.

Enter Murtha, the district’s curriculum and development specialist.

The purpose of high school, Murtha said, is to prepare students for the future—and football offers a unique opportunity to do that.

“Football allows students to identify with another form of success through goal setting and assessment,” Murtha said. “It instills habits of success in young men that translate into other parts of their life.

“My job is to build young men of good quality,” he continued. “You don’t win championships without good character.”

As for his philosophy on the gridiron, Murtha said he hopes to score as many points as possible and control the clock. To do that he will bring the I-formation offense back to Tartan, which is the most flexible way to take advantage of the players’ skill sets, he said.

The I-formation offers opportunities to use speed, power and misdirection, Murtha explained. The goal is to develop the things the kids do best and then implement that by running inside and outside zones and counter plays.

“If throwing the ball is what we do best, then that’s what we’ll do,” he said. “But when the game is on the line we have to be able to run the ball effectively to win.”

On the defensive side of the ball, Murtha wants to control the emotional nature of the game with a “flat-out physical and stingy defense,” he said. “But to win, we have to meld the offensive and defensive units.”

Developing Tartan’s football program is another thing Murtha hopes to do during his tenure.

Tartan has to be seen as a quality football program, which means everything from building a better fitness center so athletes can get stronger faster, to off-season workouts to make sure the kids are ready to go by the end of August, Moore said.

“These are the things Tim is poised to do,” he said. “He brings a lot of credibility to the program and we hope he can bring us from the middle of the conference —where we are now—to the top in the next three or four years so we can compete with South St. Paul, St. Thomas and Mahtomedi.”

Murtha met with the team last week and is currently in the process of forming his coaching staff, he said. He will be introduced to the public during the Tartan section basketball game on Friday night.

“The thing I’m most excited about is working with kids again,” Murtha said. “I missed my relationships with the kids, setting goals and assessing their strengths.”

Before joining the Tartan football program in 2001, Murtha was the offensive and defensive lines coach at Winona Cotter for four years. He also spent four years at Hill-Murray as the offensive line coach.

“We’re looking forward to this,” Moore said. “There is a buzz already.”