Breaking: Southwest Christian Names Steve Wood as New Head Football Coach

Cover Image Credit: Fort Worth Star Telegram

When making a splash, you might as well go big or go home.

That’s exactly what is happening here. Massive news is breaking out of Fort Worth, as former Aledo athletic director and state champion head coach, Steve Wood, has been named the new head man at Southwest Christian School, with Jeff Dixon set to retire.

This news is some of the biggest to rock the private school landscape in recent memory in terms of coaching coming into the TXPS ranks from the public school space.

Steve Wood is one of the very best to do it in TXHSFB history. His history of coaching in Texas includes stops at Calhoun, Dobie, Boswell, and most notably Aledo. There for 21 years, Steve Wood contributed to 11 state championships as a defensive coordinator, athletic director, and even three titles of his own while being the head coach from 2014-2019, where he amassed a record of 75-4. Both Wood and former legendary head coach and AD Tim Buchanan retired from Aledo in early 2023, leaving behind a legacy of one of the best dynasties and programs in Texas high school football history, which isn’t slowing down anytime soon. Aledo, being called “Titletown, Texas,” was solidified on the backs of these two men’s efforts.

Looking at the landscape of head coaching hires in the Texas Private School football space, it usually goes one of two ways. Either it goes the route of a up and coming coordinator at a TXPS school that brings a lot of hype, promise, and energy to the program, or it goes the route of a retired coach from the public school ranks that brings pedigree and experience to an established program.

For Southwest Christian, in this last round of hiring, they chose the latter, going with Jeff Dixon in 2023, who was a legend at Alvarado. Since then, the Eagles, led by Dixon, went 16-17 and 4-10 in district and had three straight first-round playoff exits to Legacy Christian and Regents back to back years to a combined score of 149-9. A step down of course from the back to back TAPPS DII playoff semi final visits in 2020 and 2021.

So hiring a coach like Steve Wood isn’t out of the ordinary, but a coach of his pedigree is the difference. In fact, if you are going down the route of a retired public school coach, you really can’t do better than Coach Wood. Even better, he will be the guy leading your team who won at one of the highest levels in TXHSFB at a school only 16 miles away.

Being from West Fort Worth myself, and being an alumnus of Southwest Christian, Aledo and Southwest Christian have shared families and friends many times over the years. I know this from experience since almost half of my middle school class going into my freshman year transferred to Aledo, while SCS had many students and families transfer into SCS during just my four years of high school. With the houses continuing to pop up in the newly built Walsh Ranch area between Aledo and SCS, half the new families that end up sending their kids to SCS living in that area will live in the Aledo city limits. This will be a community that will absolutely connect with Coach Wood and will not be an unusual culture for him as well.

This move will make TAPPS DII much more interesting, especially up in the North. All Saints still reigns supreme in their district and the state, and I’d be shocked to the highest level if that changes within a year, but this move shows that Southwest Christian is tired of the trend of being near the bottom of this district and wants to start the fight to climb back up. But as we know, to continually beat the Midlands, Grapevine Faiths, and the Fort Worth Christians of the world, you have to recruit to match the intensity those teams will.

From a recruiting perspective, Coach Wood brings the name pedigree, and he has the legacy of being a flat-out winner. And for prospective families from schools not named North Crowley, Crowley, and, as of recently, Arlington Heights in the greater Fort Worth area, that alone should be intriguing. Do any families from the Aledo area also think about taking a look at the school on Altamesa Boulevard with the legend from their city taking the reigns? It would be even more alluring for prospective athletes if Southwest Christian moves away from the old school wing-t offense that has brought them recent success since 2019, but as the years have gone on, the production has slowed down (As an alumnus of the school, I would love to see a switch up there as well).

Outside of the recruiting perspective, Coach Wood will have some bright spots returning as he will have returning juniors RB/ATH Slade Evans, ATH Ty Burky, TE/ATH Owen Haller, QB Eli Hufstetler, and two of the brightest freshmen in TXPS in RB/ATH Crosby Pipes and DB/WR Malcom Anderson to build around.

Now we wait and see what additional moves are made before the fall arrives. Fort Worth has a plethora of talented athletes, and it will be intriguing to see how much of that talent Coach Wood can attract to SCS. However, I am more focused on what the new culture will look like. Establishing a culture at Aledo that from the outside looking in, seems like if you don’t win a state title, it is a failure of a season. If he can bring a sliver of that culture to SCS, it will be a huge 180 in what the standard is at SCS at the moment. No matter how Wood’s tenure ends, I have no doubt that he will leave his mark on how this program is shaped for years to come.

The “offseason” has only been a couple days and we already have a couple “Woj Bombs” to start it off. I don’t think it will be slowing down anytime soon, but that’s what makes this fun. We are tracking all situations as they develop, and are active with updates here, as well as on twitter instagram and youtube.