Westwood’s Anthony Wood is retiring after 22 years, the last 20 of them as the Warriors’ Head Football Coach and Athletic Coordinator. How long is 22 years?
Cedar Creek, Cedar Ridge, East View, Buda Johnson, Glenn, Manor New Tech, Rouse, Vandegrift – these are just some of the Austin-area high schools that didn’t even exist when Wood began his stint as an assistant in 2003.
“It was just that time,” the 53-year-old Wood explained his decision to step aside. “I felt I’d been at one place for 22 years; I’ve done this for 32 years and I decided I wanted to know what else was out there.”
A former running back and wide receiver in college, Wood originally planned on a career as a finance guy working on Wall Street. It was an old coach that first told him he’d be good at coaching, launching him on an unexpected career that turned into a true passion.
As Wood hangs up the whistle for the last time, it caps a coaching career that began for the San Antonio MacArthur and Southwest Texas State graduate in 1994 with stints at Terry and Irving MacArthur High Schools. He spent the 2001-03 campaigns as an assistant at SMU where he’d earned his Master’s Degree. With his wife expecting their first child and wary of the demands of college coaching on family life – “I wanted to be a dad…” -- Wood left the Mustangs’ staff.
Uncertain what would happen next, he learned from a mentor about an open offensive coordinator’s position at Westwood, a school he’d never heard of, and landed the job in 2003, just months after leaving SMU. After two years as an assistant, Wood took over the top job and has been at Westwood ever since.
“I love the process,” Wood explained his passion for coaching at the high school level. “Every year is different. You have a new set of kids. You have a new set of issues. You’ve got weaknesses that you need to work on. You’ve got development issues. So, it’s building that plan on trying to eliminate and minimize your weaknesses and really harp on your strengths and I try to fit those all into a puzzle to give everybody an opportunity to be successful. I really love building the puzzle and trying to put it all together.”
Wood’s Westwood teams had their ups and downs. They reached the playoffs seven times during his tenure with a 10-2 high water mark in 2011 and a then-5A Division 1 Sweet 16 appearance in 2012. Other years weren’t as successful on the field – but that’s not all what it was about for Wood.
“What people don’t understand is (those good teams) were some of the hardest years,” Wood explained. “Like, we were 10-2 and 9-4 and playing Baker Mayfield and Kyler Murray in the playoffs; what people don’t realize is, when you’re good, you have so much pressure that you’re supposed to win. You never enjoyed all those wins because the minute that game was over, it was a quick sigh of relief, and you’re off to the next one and you better win this one too.
“And then the teams where you knew you weren’t as talented and you had your struggles, you kind of knew what was gonna happen,” he continued. “And so, you truly got to just love coaching and love coaching kids. And you saw the value of what the game brought out more than what winning did. Because now you’ve got kids that are really buying in, knowing that that result, that state championship at the end of the rainbow? It’s not coming. And we may not win a game. But the things that you’re gonna struggle with here are gonna help you be successful later on.
“So, I really got to enjoy those times. It’s not fun. But it’s not fun 10 nights out of the year. The other 90 to 100 days that we’re working that football season were quite a lot of fun…You’re in a great community with parents and administrators who understand and value those things and don’t see winning as the ultimate. The ultimate goal at the end is not to win; it’s to build great young men.”
Although the Westwood fixture had hinted the 2024 campaign would be his last, it still came as a shock when Wood made it official.
“There’s never a right time or a good time to leave something you love. But there is a wrong time,” Wood declared. “When one of my good friends passed away this past football season, during the season, it just kind of hit me and I thought, you know what? That’s the wrong time. I’m 53, about to be 54, and there are way more things out there that I want to experience.
“Ever since I made that decision, my stress level has gone way down, I haven’t had headaches, I’m sleeping really good at night,” Wood chuckled. “There’s just lots of things out there I’d been thinking I wanted to do.”
With nothing definite on the horizon, Wood plans on staying close to the Westwood community. He’s also considering becoming a football or basketball official or an umpire, all things he did when younger, as a way to stay close to football and youth sports.
“We really spent a lot of time on building the future,” Wood related. “And I love the opportunity to see a kid at 14 years old and see who he becomes at 18 years old. Because there’s a huge maturity growth in those kids and they need good people to guide them, and I always felt like I was meat to do that. I feel more like I’m a counselor and psychologist sometimes more than a football coach. But that’s what’s been so enjoyable.”
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