By Charles Whisnand
Appeal Sports Editor
While Tim McCarthy's first stint at Carson High School ended more than six years ago, he's never really gone away.
McCarthy returns for his third stint as Carson High's wrestling coach and is also returning to a counseling position that he once held at CHS as well. McCarthy replaced Tyson Thieverge, who left to become the wrestling coach at Montana State University-Northern.
"I'm real happy to be back at Carson High," McCarthy said. "It's a great school. I still have a lot of friends there. It's just real nice that they welcomed me back."
With Carson also being able to offer him a counsler's position, McCarthy jumped at the chance to return to coaching. "I just decided it was a good time to jump back in," he said.
McCarthy evidently believes that a more challenging time is a good time to jump back in. Northern Nevada wrestling is much deeper now than it was when McCarthy coached during his first tenure from 1994-2002.
"We'd have one of the biggest if not the biggest team," said McCarthy about his first tenure as coach. "Numbers-wisw we were always strong."
While the numbers in Carson's program may not be as big, McCarthy will still have a solid nucleus to work with.
"The cupboard by no means is full," McCarthy said. "There's still some good kids that are coming back."
McCarthy said next season will be "a rebulding-type year." But he added, "We'll still be competitive."
Even after McCarthy left CHS, he stayed heavily involved in the Carson Bulldogs youth wrestling program and said he'll still be involved in that program. McCarthy also said he hopes to be at Carson for a while as there's a strong group of middle school wrestlers entering the sixth through eighth grades who will be coming up.
One of those wrestlers is McCarthy's son, Cole McCarthy, an eighth grader. McCarthy has been one of his son's coaches and McCarthy said he's looking forward to coaching his son in high school.
Carson will need a strong group of wrestlers coming up to keep up with the competition. With the realignment of the Northern 4A leagues, Carson's league will also be brutal.
Damonte Ranch, which has emerged as a power, and traditional powers Fallon, Douglas and Galena will all be in Carson's league. "We're definitely looking up," said McCarthy about where Carson stands with many of those programs.
"We're definitely in the most difficult league. Northern Nevada wrestling is really strong right now."
So it will be a challenge for McCarthy to match the record he had during his first two tenures at Carson. His overall dual match record was 128-43, which including going 15-0 in 2001-2002.
McCarthy returned to be the co-coach with Jim Franz in 2004-2005 and under their leadership, Carson finished as the zone runner-up behind Fallon. McCarthy graduated from the University of Montana in Missoula in 1998 before eventually coming to Carson.
And since McCarthy left after his first stint, Carson hasn't been able to replace him for the long-time. Dean Schmanski replaced McCarthy and coached for two years. McCarthy and Franz came back on an interim basis before Casey Schweitzer took over in 2005-2006.
Schweitzer coached for one year before Thivierge coached for the last two years. After leaving Carson, McCarthy was a counsler at Galena for five years and for the last year has worked at a milk processing plant in Yerington.
But now McCarthy is back and he's looking forward to the competition and events like the Sierra Nevada Classic and the Tournament of Champions in Reno.