Does this longtime Washington high school football coach have the most interesting career odyssey?

Andy Bush is entering his 19th season at White Swan High School - and 40th overall as a head coach

Heading into 2024, White Swan's Andy Bush is entering his 40th season as a coach in Washington high school football. / Photo courtesy of Andy Bush

Comparatively-speaking, Monte Kohler has lived a humdrum life. Entering his fourth decade coaching in one of the state's most successful football programs at O'Dea, he is a four-time WIAA champion on the verge of becoming the all-time winningest coach ever in Washington.

So, what about the other guy across the state who is also entering his 40th season?

Well, his journey has been a little more roundabout.

Yakima native Andy Bush is a traveler who has coached at six different schools covering five different WIAA classifications, including the past 18 seasons at White Swan High School.

While Bush has, too, won a couple of WIAA championships at Garfield-Palouse in the 1980s, he also has taken on some of the most challenging jobs in the state - which prompted him to crack, "I have the most losses (210) ... and I've got a state record that will be tough to beat."

His story is tough to beat.

A 1977 graduate of now-defunct Carroll High School (now La Salle), Bush was a two-way lineman who always wanted to be a coach.

As a recent college graduate, he took his first job as an assistant coach at Columbia of Hunters, a tiny eight-man school just north of Spokane.

Except on his first day, Bush was informed by then-district superintendent Roy Graffis, who also is the only coach in state history to win WIAA titles in football, boys basketball and girls basketball, that new coach Mark Breidenbach quit

So, in 1981, Bush unexpectedly became a head coach at age 22.

"It was interesting," Bush said. "I didn't know a lot."

After three seasons, Bush left to become the football coach and athletic director at Garfield-Palouse in 1984, and won back-to-back Class 1B championships in 1986 and 1987 (with Graffis winning one at Columbia of Hunters in 2B at same time in 1987).

"That was kind of fun watching my first team and second team win like that," Bush said.

While still teaching at Garfield-Palouse, Bush left the football program to become a graduate defensive staff assistant under John L. Smith at the University of Idaho (1993, 1994).

"I ran our scout team defense against our offense," Bush said. "I learned a lot."

After one more season at Garfield-Palouse (1995), Bush decided to make a drastic change - move to the greater Seattle area to lead a bigger program.

A runner-up to recently-retired John Gradwohl for the Edmonds-Woodway opening, Bush instead was hired to coach at Mountlake Terrace.

"That was a whole new level - with giant Edmonds Stadium as our home," Bush said. "I was playing against guys like Terry Ennis, who was at Cascade (Everett) and Snohomish with Mark (Perry), who had just come off all those wins (under (Dick Armstrong)."

After four seasons at Mountlake Terrace, Bush dipped his toe in the Metro League waters by taking over at Cleveland in 2002 where he posted a respectable 9-10 record as the league's smallest school, including wins over Seattle Prep and West Seattle (in five overtimes), and even faced off against former UW coach Rick Neuheisel in his one season at Rainier Beach.

"I wanted to try coaching in the inner city," Bush said. "It was unbelievable. We were right there for playoff spots after having one of the longest losing streaks at the time. We had some big wins."

After that, it was time to come home.

Bush was hired at downtrodden Davis of Yakima in 2004 where he never won a game (0-20) in his two seasons.

In 2006, he left to grab the reins at White Swan, where he's been at ever since.

And yet, his biggest coaching-buzz moment came in 2013 when Bush received international headlines for having 6-foot-4, 400-pound Tony "Big Tone" Picard line up as his starting fullback.

Bush recalled the reason the story got so big is because college football broadcaster Brock Huard posted a photo of Picard on his social media account, and suddenly nearly 300 interview requests poured in.

"It was a whirlwind," Bush said. "They flew us live to New York (for a talk show) and had us riding around in a limo. ... Everyone wanted to see the big guy run the ball."

Even though White Swan football has had four consecutive losing seasons, Bush said he still has "the energy and drive" to continue leading the program.

"I don't focus on wins like I did when I was younger," Bush said. "I do a lot of trickery stuff because we cannot line up toe to toe with very many teans. And the kids love that, too."

Bush and Kohler will become the sixth and seventh coaches in state history this fall to coach 40 or more seasons in Washington.

And the first game of his 40th season? It will come at Marquette Stadium against La Salle where he debuted in high school football as a ninth-grade lineman in 1974.

"I have always loved the sport of football, especially the finesse side of it," Bush said.