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  • A.J. Gass has resigned as Servite's football coach after two...

    A.J. Gass has resigned as Servite's football coach after two seasons. Servite started the 2014 season ranked No. 1 in Orange County, but finished with a 4-7 record and lost in the first round of the Pac-5 playoffs.

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A.J. Gass has resigned from Servite to accept the football coaching position at Garces Memorial, a Catholic coed high school in Bakersfield.

Gass, an All-Orange County football player at Servite in the 1990s, replaced Troy Thomas in 2013 and coached Servite for two seasons.

The Friars were 6-6 in 2013 and made it to the second round of the Pac-5 playoffs. After starting the 2014 season as the top-ranked team in Orange County, they went 4-7 overall, including losses to highly ranked Bishop Gorman of Las Vegas, De La Salle of Concord and St. John Bosco, and nearly upset Long Beach Poly, 34-33, in the first round of the playoffs.

Gass replaces Tim Antongiovanni, who resigned after one season as Garces’ coach. Garces was 1-9 overall this season. Garces was 10-3 overall in 2013.

“We got an A-plus coach,” Garces athletic director Joan Finch told the Bakersfield Californian. “We are very thrilled. This is a huge hire. Coming from the Trinity League, this is big-time for us.”

Gass played college football at Fresno State, where he was an all-conference linebacker. He then spent 10 years playing for the Edmonton Eskimos of the CFL and later became an assistant coach for the team before joining Servite’s staff an assistant coach.