Daleville's Woolf named Coach of the Year

For the second consecutive year a Daleville coach has earned The Southeast Sun/Daleville Sun-Courier Coach of the Year but this time around it’s current Warhawk coach Trey Woolf.

The circumstances that brought Woolf to Daleville were highly unusual as 2017 Coach of the Year Rob Armstrong departed the school late in the summer.

That departure left school officials scrambling for a new head coach just weeks before the start of the football season.

Enter Trey Woolf. Woolf was a highly successful coach in Georgia for more than 15-years at Early County High School before retiring in 2017, then returning to lead the Daleville program.

“I knew about the tradition over here and I knew a little bit about the administration and I just thought it was a really good opportunity for me to kind of restart my career,” Woolf said after accepting the job. “I don’t know that there has been a lot of coaches in this exact position, taking over so late in the summer, but it is what it is and we are going to get to work and get things headed in the right direction.”

Woolf didn’t want to throw too many changes too quickly at his team, so he retained the entire Armstrong staff and kept the offensive and defensive schemes as close to what had previously been run as possible.

Still, Daleville struggled to begin the season and lost three of its first four games of the season.

Then, the Warhawks began to gel and won four of the last five games to earn a playoff spot.

“The biggest thing I hoped was that we would get better and better as the year went on and I think we did just that,” Woolf said. “We got better and we started to get some injured players back and started to gel together. I think we left some things on the field but I was pleased with how the season went.”

Woolf said he wanted to win but the thing he wanted most for his team, especially the seniors, was that they enjoyed the season.

“I’ve said this before and I really mean it,” Woolf continued. “I hope it was a good experience for those guys. That’s really what I wanted. We had our bumps and bruises, but we got better and better all year and were at our best for the first playoff game.”

Daleville stunned Reeltown, on the road, in the first round of the playoffs and got an opportunity to host Leroy in the second round. Against Leroy, Daleville took a 21-point lead into the fourth quarter before Leroy made an improbable comeback.

Still, Woolf hopes the success his Warhawks had in 2018 will propel future teams and with an entire offseason under his belt by the time the season rolls around he expects an even better 2019.

“We have to have a good offseason,” Woolf said. “We really have to get more kids out here and get our numbers up. That will be our biggest goal is getting more players out here and getting us some more depth and get us stronger.”