Published: July 09, 2008 11:46 am         

Fired up and ready: New Leopards volleyball all set to go

Fired up and ready.

That pretty well describes newly hired Gainesville High School Volleyball Coach Glenn “Jake” Jacobs.

“I am ready to start the season tomorrow,” Jacobs said Tuesday, during a break in getting ready to move to the new high school. “Not today,” he said, “because I don’t have all the stuff organized, but tomorrow.”

Jacobs, who spent six years at Elgin High School (near Austin), becomes the second head coach in the past two years for the Lady Leopards.

He replaces Jeff Cornell.

Jacobs comes to Gainesville with an impressive 193-91 career record.

He coached Shiner Saint Paul to two TAPPS state titles (1993-94) and was in the playoffs all six years while he was in Elgin.

“At Elgin,” he said, “we won five area titles and one district title.”

Jacobs said the big reason he is in Gainesville is new Athletic Director Ricky Lock. “I was on Coach Lock’s staff when he was in Elgin.

“I know he will do things the right way.”

According to GISD Superintendent Bill Gravitt, one of the things that he liked about Lock was the fact that he has the reputation of giving as much attention to the girls athletic program as he does to the boys.

“I like the way he (Lock) pays attention to the girls program,” Jacobs said.

Jacobs said he will make sure that the new version of the Lady Leopards volleyball team is sound defensively.

“All my teams are based on defense,” he said. “We will be scrappy on the defensive end. I have never had the luxury of having many players that were tall, so I have always based my team concept on defense.”

When asked to describe what type of character his teams have he said the players need to be “battlers.”

“I want kids with big hearts and that are competitive,” Jacobs said. “That is really hard to teach.”

Jacobs said his offense will be aggressive. “It won’t be passive,” Jacobs said. “You won’t see just only one player doing the sets. I’ll move players around.”

Jacobs is a graduate of Southwest Texas State (now Texas State University). “I just can’t call it Texas State,” Jacobs said.

Jacobs said he had a lot of friends in college that played volleyball. “They showed me the game from the inside,” he said. “The first job I was offered was as a volleyball coach.”

He has been fired up ever since.