‘Coach Jake’ hanging up his whistle

“It’s been coming for a couple seasons now where I’ve been looking at my watch, ‘I can’t believe we have 20 more minutes.’ I used to be the first one there and now I’m looking at my watch,” Jacobson, 51, said. “I looked around. … This is a great coaching staff. If there was ever a time to walk away, this was it. I didn’t talk to my dad, I didn’t talk to my wife, I didn’t talk to Lonnie (Beckenhauer, Jacobson’s mentor).

“I feel we’re in a good spot right now.”

Jacobson served as varsity head coach from 2000 to 2009. Since then, he served as a varsity assistant. He stepped into the head coaching job again in the middle of the 2014 season and stayed through 2017. Archie Junio, another El Camino graduate, took over the reins for the Colts beginning the 2018 campaign. A family matter kept Junio off the sidelines in 2019, when the team was run by Rustin Mayorga, also an El Camino alum. Junio was back leading the Colts this past spring and is fronting the program going forward.

Jacobson will remain with the school, both as a teacher and working alongside Jeff Cosico as co-athletic director, which he believes will satiate his desire to be involved in athletics.

“Being AD will be enough,” Jacobson said. “I’ll still be around the guys. A lot of memories are made in the coaching offices.”

Jacobson has not only been a presence for the El Camino football team, he has been a driving force in getting new and improved athletic facilities. A new athletic field with lights, along with baseball, softball and tennis facilities that have all been upgraded over the past several years.

But now Jacobson feels his job is done. He relayed a story from early in his career when he was talking to an opposing coach before the start of the game, who was whining and wondering why he was still coaching.

Jacobson vowed, right then and there, he would never be that guy.

“I don’t ever want to be that guy who is hanging on just because he wants to hang on,” Jacobson said.

If there was ever anyone who could be excused from throwing in the towel earlier than he did, it’s Jacobson. He battled for years with Charcot-Marie-Tooth Disease, a rare bone disorder that produced a tremendous amount of pain which eventually necessitated the amputation of his right foot in 2010. Through it all, he was still involved with the Colts’ program.

Despite the anticipation he was nearing the end of his coach career, it took the pandemic and ensuing shutdown to really drive the point home that there was more to life than football. The Pacifica resident said he and his wife, Chrissy, went down to the Pacifica Pier almost daily. He weaned himself off football by following the 2020 season of Texas-based Permian Panthers football team, of “Friday Night Lights” fame, on internet radio.

“During the pandemic, I got to spend time with my wife and myself. We had a pretty good time together,” Jacobson said. “I got to learn to like myself and do things away from football.”

A 1988 graduate of El Camino, Jacobson got into coaching early, working with Beckenhauer and his staff beginning in 1989 as he recovered from ankle surgery. He played a season at City College of San Francisco in 1990 and prior to the 1991 season, was asked to Beckenhauer if he wanted to take over as El Camino’s junior varsity head coach, which began his head coaching career. In 2000, he took over the head varsity position with the retirement of Beckenhauer, who continues on staff to this day.

Jacobson said he was grateful he got to coach this spring, because he had confided with a couple of players following the 2019 season that 2020 would most likely be his last.

He started to think he might have to stick around until after the 2021 fall season, but the four-game schedule the Colts played in spring was enough to let Jacobson know he was done.

“I was thankful we went back in [March and April] because I wanted it to be my last year,” Jacobson said. “I wanted to be here for three Bell wins in a row (victories over rival South City, which has owned the rivalry series). … That means a lot to guys who didn’t have a lot of success against South City.”

Jacobson said now is the time to devote his life to his wife, whom he met in 1994 and married in 1997, and their relationship.

“The best thing I ever did was marry a woman who didn’t like football. … The losses are brutal. My wife had to put up with that,” Jacobson said. “I’m done. Let me put it this way: as long as my wife is alive, I won’t be coaching football. She deserves to have me to herself.”

For the record: Chrissy Jacobson is perfectly fine and healthy.

Nathan Mollat can be reached by email: Nathan@smdailyjournal.com or by phone: 650-344-5200 ext. 117. Results and statistics can be emailed to: sports@smdailyjournal.com.