Father-Son Rivalry Powers Former Air Force Colonel as TXHSFB Defensive Coordinator

Father-Son Rivalry Powers Former Air Force Colonel as TXHSFB Defensive Coordinator
Haslet Eaton defensive coordinator Craig Hardin used to fly the F-16 Fighting Falcon as a Colonel in the Air Force. Now he's hoping his defense will fly around the field in 2023 and figure out a way to slow down Keller Timber Creek's passing game, where his son, Jake Hardin, coaches.

Craig Hardin literally had other things on his radar while in the cockpit of an F-16 Fighting Falcon. The seed was always there, buried in the back of his mind, ready to sprout when the time was right.

Now, some years removed from his career in the skies, his title of Air Force Colonel now a memory, Hardin finds himself once again a pilot, albeit of a different plane. The plant has grown.

—-

Hardin, 59, sits next to his wife, Karen, on the edge of a lake in New Hampshire, where kids play, dogs bark and the temperature sits comfortably below triple digits. Time seems to crawl. He’s just finished preparing for his nightly quest fishing bass, ushering in dusk as the sun splays itself over the crystal-clear water.

You’d expect that level of readiness with Craig Hardin.

He would soon say goodbye to his annual escape north and return to home base in Fort Worth. Summer workouts for V.R. Eaton High School’s football team will ramp up significantly in intensity, especially with Hardin, the school’s defensive coordinator, in the fold.

Relatively, football, or at least coaching it, is a new beast for Hardin. He’s loved it all his life, ultimately spurning an opportunity to play collegiately at an Ivy League school for the Air Force Academy thanks to relentless pressure from his mother and a Richland High counselor, Lynda Hamilton.

Hardin ultimately did suit up for Air Force’s football team, but quickly realized it wasn’t his true passion. He got the bug to fly jets, naturally, and that’s exactly what he did. And damn well, at that.

“I tell people Top Gun came out in May of 1986, I went to pilot training in June of 1986 kind of at the height of that surge,” Hardin said. “Once you get in it, I think, like, competitive nature [takes over], you just keep trying to do better and you keep challenging yourself. The Air Force does a great job of presenting opportunities and I was fortunate, and I guess at some point I must have been pretty good at it, and just kept moving up in the F-16 world.”

Sign In