After 30 years, Denison head football coach Brent Whitson is stepping away from the sidelines. Pending board approval on Monday night, he’s set to become the new Director of Athletics at Celina ISD.
“It’s really hard,” Whitson said of his decision to hang up his whistle. “I just came to the point where I felt like I could affect more kids’ lives in this job. I try to be as many things as I can, but I still don’t know all the kids, and I want to know them so that’s going to be my next chapter.”
Bill Elliott retired in January after 14 years leading the Bobcats football program.
Celina’s most recent athletic director and head football coach Bill Elliott retired in January after 14 years leading the Bobcats. His retirement came after his son, Caleb, an assistant middle school coach, was arrested on charges of child pornography and invasive visual recording.
It’s a chain of events that has rocked Celina to its core over the past several months.
“Job one for me is going to be taking care of the kids and job two is going to be regaining trust,” Whitson said. “We’ve got to put it in the rearview mirror, but at the same time, take care of the kids that were affected and do everything in the world to make sure, like every school district, that doesn’t happen again.”
On the football field, Celina has been dominant as of late. The Bobcats won the 2024 4A Division I State Championship and are coming off a 14-1 campaign this past fall where they made it to the state semifinals.
One of the first tasks on Whitson’s to-do list? Hire a football coach to continue that proud tradition.
“It’s a legendary job. People want to be associated with G.A. Moore and Coach Elliott,” Whitson said. “I want a guy that charisma just oozes out of him because that’s the first thing kids look for. I want guys that have won. That along with the ability to make kids feel loved.”
Whitson would know a thing or two about what it takes to lead a program.
He’s spent the past 26 years doing just that, beginning at Shawnee and Broken Arrow in Oklahoma. In 2007, he accepted the Richardson High School head coaching job. After four years there, he spent a decade at South Grand Prairie before leading Denison the past five years. In all, he finishes with a 150-133 record.
At Denison, he amassed a 24-27 record across five seasons.
“I’m proud of it. I think we did the program justice,” Whitson said of his time leading the Yellow Jackets. “We tried to communicate really well, spend time with the media because that’s how kids grow. You stick a camera in their face, and they figure out if they can do it or not because the rest of their life might be a camera but it might be somebody shaking their hand offering them a job, so we tried to build people there, and I think we’ve done a really good job.”
Now, he’ll turn his attention to building on Celina’s winning tradition, which in addition to football, has included state championships in girls’ soccer, girls’ cross country, and cheerleading all in the past four years.
A new chapter and a new dream that he can’t wait to start pursuing.
“[Coaching] is all I ever wanted to do,” Whitson said. “I’ve loved every day of it. Since 1996, I’ve never gone to work one day. I’ve just shown up and loved on kids and loved on coaches and gotten to know communities. Now, [I’m] going to go affect another one.”
