Orson Christensen (left) and Tony Maggio, football lifers. (Photo by JohnsPhotos.net)
The Brain Trust is back in business.
Former Coupeville High School football coaches Tony Maggio and Orson Christensen are back in the game, only at a different school.
Maggio, who was the head coach at CHS from 2012-2014, is the new Defensive Coordinator at Oak Harbor High School, while Christensen will help break down game film for his running mate.
“Like Batman and Robin!,” said Maggio, and you could hear the smile in his voice through the text message.
Oak Harbor’s coaching staff had almost a complete turnover after longtime head coach Jay Turner stepped down after last season.
The new man in charge is Marcus Hughes, who arrives on Whidbey having coached previously at both the high school and college levels.
For Maggio, it’s a return to a school where he was previously an assistant coach.
After jumping to Coupeville from Oak Harbor to work with Jay Silver, he later moved up to the head coaching gig and had a successful three-year run.
Of the five head coaches the Wolves have employed over the past decade, Maggio had the longest tenure, beat arch-rival South Whidbey twice, and improved the team’s win/loss record each season.
He capped his time on the job with a 5-5 record in 2014, the only time Coupeville football has posted a non-losing season since 2005.
Working alongside him during those Coupeville days was Christensen, who knows the game inside-out, and then some.
A 1957 graduate of Oak Harbor High School — where he was a four-sport letter winner — he went on to play both ways on the line for Pacific Lutheran University before starting a 50+ year coaching career.
CHS was the 16th stop on Christensen’s coaching journey, one on which he’s won eight titles and been named a Coach of the Year five times.
The duo were inducted together into the Coupeville Sports Hall o’ Fame in 2017, an honor they get to keep, even if they are sporting different team colors now.
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