End of an Era

[AggiesAreWe]

Hooks to step away from WO-S sideline
Van Wade
The Orange Leader The Orange Leader Fri Mar 18, 2011, 05:15 PM CDT

WEST ORANGE — Many football fans said long-time West Orange-Stark head football coach Dan Hooks would roam the sidelines as long as Penn State’s Joe Paterno.

The Hooks era and Paterno idea ended Friday when Hooks, 72, said he was going to step down as the head coach and athletic director at the end of the school year.

Those that know him well know that “Dan the Man” can still coach with the best in the business. He told The Orange Leader he decided to step down after coaching in the district for 33 years. His last day will officially be June 30.

Hooks is taking advantage of an incentive set by the district on employees who announced their retirement/resignation by noon Friday. Hooks will receive 10% of his salary which is over $80,000.

Someone else will be controlling the main whistle for the Mustangs when they line up this fall for the first time since 1981.

It is truly a sad day for the WO-S faithful but it probably brightened the smiles on kids named Brennan, Steeley, Amber and Jake.

“Those are my grandchildren, and I can’t wait to spend more time with them and I can’t wait to be a full-time Paw Paw,” Hooks said. “After being in the business for 43 years, it was finally the right time to step down. I went to Brennan’s T-Ball game the other day and I just love stuff like that. I want to do more and more of those types of things. I’m not a ‘spring chicken’ anymore, so I’m looking forward to spending my time with my family.”

Hooks’ wife Cynthia along with his children Shae Lynn, Dee Dee and David were behind him on the decision.

“When I woke up this morning (Friday), Cynthia basically said ‘Babe, do whatever makes you happy and I’m behind you all the way,’” Hooks said. “The decision was definitely a difficult one but working those six and seven-day weeks August through December was kinda taking a toll. I will always have respect and love for the entire Mustang Family and the friendships I’ve been able to build along the way, but now, it’s going to all be about my family and I’m going to enjoy every bit of it.”

The long-time Mustangs legend has definitely seen it all over the years, from two state Class 4A state championships and four state finals appearances, to heart-breaking playoffs and then there was the sudden loss of senior quarterback Reggie Garrett this past season.

Garrett collapsed and passed away on the sidelines of Dan R. Hooks Stadium  Sept. 17, 2010 in a game against the Jasper Bulldogs.

The death made national news and left a huge hole in the community and all around WO-S High School, especially in the athletic director who worked with Garrett on a daily basis.

Hooks has not only left a mark on the landscape of Southeast Texas football, he has left a big impression on the game across Texas.

Hooks posted a stunning 277-71-2 record and 17 district championships in his 29 years as head coach of the Mustangs. His .794 career winning percentage is the best in the state over the past 50 years. He also notched a 37-19 record in the postseason.

Hooks is proud of that mark and the folks who helped established it.

“That record may go next to my name but countless people helped those numbers get reached,” said Hooks. “It goes without saying that Cornel Thompson has to be mentioned. Year-in and year-out there is a reason that West Orange-Stark had not only the best defenses in our area but state-wide too. Guys like Cornel, Mark Foreman, who are both still helping the program, along with Ed Dyer and countless others that date back through the 1980s and 1990s have made it all happen.”

Hooks, who was an assistant to first-ever  WO-S head coach Steve McCarthy in 1977 before taking the head-coaching duties in 1981, has watched young men head to the college level and excel.

He also witnessed former Mustangs reach the NFL level, including three-time Super Bowl winner Kevin Smith with the Cowboys along with Chris Cole, who played for the Denver Broncos.

Hooks is now able to watch Seattle Seahwaks safety Earl Thomas on NFL Sundays after Thomas shined at the University of Texas.

“It doesn’t get much better, when on Sundays you can turn the tube on and watch a kid you coached excel beside the best in the business,” said Hooks. “From watching Kevin win three rings to seeing Earl make the playoffs his rookie season, it’s a great thing to watch. Wins are great and all but having the pleasure of watching kids grow up, mature and turn themselves into super human beings in life, no matter what profession they’re in, and knowing that you might have had a little part in that, that’s the most important thing to me.”

Hooks watched WO-S go from a large Class 5A school when West Orange High and Stark High merged and put together a football team for the first time in 1977.He’s also seen the economy across Southeast Texas hit a tough patch. He has witnessed his Mustangs drop to the Class 4A ranks in 1986.  WO-S is now Class 3A school with mid-level enrollment figures.



Hooks History

Everyone in the area knew WO-S was on the brink of something special back in 1985 when they took a stout Houston Yates squad down to the wire in the Mustangs’ last year in 5A.

WO-S claimed its first of back-to-back 4A state titles when they toppled McKinney 21-9 in the State Championship. The game fans may remember the most that year was when the Mustangs toppled Jasper 21-15 in the third round. Jasper had defeated WO-S earlier in the season by a score of 21-8.

“That win over McKinney, I guess, will be the one that sticks out the most,” said Hooks. “We had won our semifinal game, so we scouted McKinney in their semifinal. I looked over at Cornel and asked him if we could beat them. Cornel had this pale look in his face and said, ‘I just don’t know coach.’ The rest was history though, because we went out and smacked a darn good McKinney team in the mouth.”

The 1987 Mustangs team may go down as one of the state’s best ever.

Many fans in Southeast Texas had never seen a more fierce defense and the Mustangs had a superb offense to match it. WO-S outscored their 1987 playoff opponents 128-34 in five playoff tilts and were not playing “the sisters of the poor” as Coach Hooks always likes to say as they wrapped the title up with a 17-7 victory over Rockwall.

“That team, and we’ve had some good ones, was probably the best we ever put out there,” said Hooks. “That defense was like running into a brick wall, and offensively, we were such a well-oiled machine. The kids thought they were invincible and went out and proved it.”

The 1988 campaign saw the Mustangs march to the 4A state title tilt before falling to a formidable Paris squad.

If WO-S ever had kryptonite, it was definitely in the form of the C.E. King Panthers. King defeated the Mustangs in bi-district three straight seasons (1989-91).

The 1995 Mustangs unit was one of the best to never reach the state title game. The squad had state championship “written all over it” if it wasn’t for a LaMarque team that seemed to have, from a fan’s standpoint, 40 NCAA Division I players. The Mustangs gave the Cougars their toughest challenge of the season as LaMarque stormed to the 4A crown.

The 2000 campaign is a great memory for fans across the area as the Mustang coaching staff, perhaps, did their best coaching job ever.

WO-S was barely a Class 4A unit with a ton of players starting on both sides of the ball.

The defense was superb and was lead by a tremendous secondary that featured seniors Jermaine Hope, Michael Ledet and Jeff Thibodeaux — who all went on to star at The University of Tulsa — and a sophomore named Vonteer Edwards. Edwards later played at McNeese State University.

The team 2000 got over the LaMarque hump in the Astrodome and then fought back to take down Corpus Christi Calallen in the waning seconds in the semifinals, They eventually ran out of gas against an explosive Ennis team in the state finals.

The Mustangs got as far as the state semifinals in Class 3A when they fell to a much bigger Wimberley team. Thomas and Kenneth Beasley, who both went on to the University of Texas, were the stars off that 12-1 squad.

The district gave Hooks a huge honor in August 2006 by renaming the stadium at WO-S High School Dan R. Hooks Stadium. He was inducted into the Southeast Texas Coaches’ Association Hall of Honor earlier in 2006.



Tough Work Ethic

The Mustangs never really carried a huge roster in any of the years under Hooks. The roster has usually hovered around the 30-player mark. As many former WO-S players would put it, “It was Survival of the Fittest.”

Arguably, there is probably not a program in Southeast Texas that works harder than the Mustangs in the weight room in the offseason and practices during the season.

“I coached nearly 10 years in the business before I came to WO-S and once I got here, I realized there were some special kids here,” said Hooks. “There was just something about the work ethic they brought to the table. They always wanted to be coached and wanted to be pushed. That kinda describes the Orange-area, just a bunch of hard-working folks that earn their paychecks. Once we started winning, the kids bought into it and the community was behind us the whole way.”



Saying Good-bye

So what is Hooks going to miss the most?

“I’m going to miss hanging around the guys around the fieldhouse and all of the old ‘war stories’ that we’ve shared over the years, and the kids,” Hooks said. “That coaching staff I’m leaving, they’re just like part of my family. They can count on me dropping by and giving them a hard time any day of the week.”

Friday nights will certainly be different across the Southeast Texas football landscape without Hooks roaming the sidelines, getting into officials’ ears and patting his ‘kids’ on the rear as someone else will be calling the shots for the Blue and Silver Mustangs in 2011.

“Whoever gets the job will find himself in pretty good darn shape,” said Hooks. “It really is such a tough deal for me because I really feel we’re going to be pretty salty next year. I’ve got an idea in my mind who should get the job or be the front-runners but the school will have to make that decision.”

James Colbert, superintendent with WO-C CISD, said Friday Hooks will certainly be missed.

“It is sad to see an iconic staff member retire from our District, especially with the legacy that he has created with West Orange-Stark football,” Colbert said in a press release. “We value and respect him. When people across this state think of West Orange-Cove School District or West Orange-Stark High School, they think of Mustang football, Dan Hooks, and Dan R. Hooks Stadium. We are going to miss him tremendously,”

So what is the coach with the best All-time winning percentage in a state that arguably has the best talent across our nation going to do when Friday nights roll around in August?

“I’m going to find me a Game of the Week to go to each week and something tells me most of them will be Mustang games,” said Hooks. “I bleed ‘Blue’ and that’s never going to stop. I’ll have a front row seat at Provost-Umphrey Stadium when my Mustangs play Nederland to start the season.”

Hooks wanted to thank the school district that employed him for all the years.

“I’ve had the pleasure to not only work with tremendous coaching staffs, but so many teachers and administrators have meant so much success to the program,” said Hooks. “I wish I could name them all and tell them how much I care about them and what they’ve meant to me but they all know who they are. I have so many scrapbooks of memories in my mind that I will hold onto forever and I appreciate the school district for having me all these years. I wish everyone well down the road and hope they have continued success.”