When last we spoke with Gino Mariani, the highly-successful football coach was just departing his long-time gig at Highland High School and preparing for his last year as a teacher. And making it perfectly clear he wasn’t done coaching.

“I’m not done coaching and look forward to my next coaching opportunity…,” Mariani said in a statement issued shortly after his departure from the powerhouse Highland program he oversaw for over two decades.

A year later, and after his first fall without the responsibilities of coaching, Mariani is back on the sideline, and the time away from the sport only confirmed what he knew last summer — he was born to coach football.

“It was a strange journey,” Mariani said of his season without football. “Where you’ve had your whole life revolving around strategy, or schedules, or things that you have to keep in order — getting camps ready, those kinds of things. It’s been a strange year.”

It got even stranger this spring, when Highland High School caught fire, with the school’s gymnasium burning to the ground, and a lot of the Rams athletic history that Mariani was a part of threatened. Highland students wound up finishing the school year at Century High School, and Mariani completed his last year as a teacher across town.

“It was different,” Mariani said of the post-fire experience. “I didn’t like it. It was good for the kids to be about to get back to somewhat normal, but it was a strange ending to a tough year.”

After that “tough year,” Mariani is back doing what he does best — coaching football. He’s serving as the offensive coordinator for Madison High School in Rexburg, under Bobcat head coach Chandler Rhoades. Mariani started working with the Bobcats this spring, and he’s driving up to Rexburg a couple of times a week to help with summer sessions. Once fall camp starts, he’ll be making the 140-mile round trip from Pocatello to Rexburg on a daily basis.

“For me, it’s a new challenge,” Mariani said. “It’s something different. It’s been fun. They’ve been really receptive to what I’m doing — open arms. ‘Anything you want to do, you do it,’ so it’s been fun that way.”

Rhoads, 33, is a young coach heading into his third season with the Bobcats, and he has turned the offense over to Mariani to allow him to focus more on the defensive side of the ball. Madison, which finished 5-4 last season, is still in the rebuilding process, Mariani said, but the Bobcats’ last two freshmen teams finished unbeaten.

“There are some good kids coming,” Mariani said. “They’re young, they’re athletic, … but I’ve always believed this — the best football is played on this side of the state. You still have Rigby who is loaded with talent. You still have Highland, who is loaded with talent. Thunder Ridge is going to be loaded with talent eventually. There are a lot of good schools you have to be able to compete with.”

Mariani’s biggest challenge so far has been installing his offensive system, which is best described as a West Coast offense built around the short passing game. Last year, Rhoads ran the Bobcat offense, and he had a good running quarterback, so he installed a lot of quarterback counters and power runs.

“It’s been a challenge,” Mariani said. “The kids I coached previously, they go their freshman year and up and they hear the same terminology. So now you’re throwing that terminology at a bunch of kids that have dealt with something different. They were not a West Coast team by any means. There was a lot of different terminology. A lot of the same schemes, but just different terminology from what I use. That’s been the biggest challenge, I guess, of anything.”

Mariani left the Highland program, where he won four state titles and coached future NFL players like Taysom Hill and Tommy Togiai, after a long-simmering difference in philosophies with the school administration. He didn’t attend any games last fall, but he still watched a lot of football.

“I’d watch a lot on IdahoSports.com, and those type of things,” he said. “I yelled at my iPad a few times, going, ‘What the heck are people doing here?’ So that was a little frustrating at time, but I was still close to who the kids are and the coaches, and you knew what they were going through.”

When former Idaho State coach Charlie Ragle abruptly resigned at the end of his first season on the job, there was some local support for Mariani to get the job. He informed ISU Athletic Director Pauline Thiros that he was interested in the position, which eventually went to former Cal-Davis offensive coordinator Cody Hawkins.

“I didn’t get called back,” Mariani said of the ISU search. “…I’ve always wanted an opportunity to help up there (at ISU, where Mariani was a quarterback in the 1980s). If it shows up, I’ll be around. I don’t see myself going anywhere. If it doesn’t, I’ll be fine working with high school teams.”

Mariani, 57, isn’t sure what the long-term future holds for him. He says he may do some substitute teaching at Madison, which would allow him to spend the entire day in Rexburg while he’s coaching there. Then he’ll see how this stint as offensive coordinator goes this fall before determining if this his how he wants to spend his “retirement” days.

“The nicest thing about that is not having to deal with the stuff the head coaches have to deal with,” Mariani said of being an assistant. “You’re just worried about Xs and Os and that type of stuff, where he’s got to worry about raising money and the parents, and all the other things that go with being a head coach. I don’t have to worry about that.”

Looking back on his very strange year without football, Mariani says he still believes he made the right decision in walking away from the Highland position, which was filled by his former assistant Nick Sorrell.

“Not having that athletic process, I missed that,” he acknowledged. “But I still made the right decision for myself and my family and moving on. And it was time for Highland to move on with someone new.”

While he’ll be commuting to Rexburg on a regular basis, Mariani, who coached at both Pocatello and Highland high schools, wants to be clear that he’s still a part of the Pocatello community.

“I just appreciate so much what Pocatello and Highland high schools have given me the opportunity to do,” he said. “And I want to continue to coach and grow this game. I want to help Idaho football be top notch across the state. If I can help, I want to do it. That’s my biggest goal.”

Brad Bugger has been observing athletics in southeastern Idaho for over 40 years as a sports writer, broadcaster and fan. He can be reached at bpbugger@gmail.com.