When Joey McGuire left Cedar Hill to become part of Matt Rhule’s coaching staff at Baylor, that opened up one of the premiere high school football coaching jobs in the state. Under McGuire’s tenure, the Longhorns won three state championships (2006, 2013, 2014) and became a perennial title contender. As of Monday night, one of those coaches from the first state title is now in charge.
Carlos Lynn was officially named the head coach of the Longhorns after nine seasons as the head coach at Arlington Seguin. Previously, he was the Longhorns’ defensive coordinator under McGuire for 10 seasons, including the 2006 state championship team.
As he transitions into his new role, Lynn spoke with TexasHSFootball.com about his new job and his excitement about coming back to a program that he had a role in building up many years ago.
Since you were officially named the head coach on Monday, what have the last couple of days been like for you?
It’s been crazy. Any transition is always hectic at the beginning. You have well wishes coming from so many people that are excited for you and that just want to congratulate you. Your phone is just tied down with people.
You’re also trying to maneuver through all the paperwork from making sure you have everything signed and getting everything done at your old school and trying to get here as soon as possible.
With all that, the wheels are turning on how you want to transition into the program, building your coaching staff and evaluating your kids, so there’s just a lot of stuff all at once. It’s a good problem to have and I’m excited about the challenge and I’m looking forward to everything coming up.
Arlington Seguin was your first head coaching job. What do you think is the biggest lesson you learned from that job that you can take over to Cedar Hill?
Dealing with teenage boys is a challenge in and of itself. Our goal is to educate young men, not just as football coaches or people who oversee extracurricular activities, but as educators. After the game is over and the kids decide on what they want to do in life, it is part of our job that we give them what they need on how to live, how to function, have manners, have respect and have a good moral compass. At the end of the day, those are the things that I’ve learned.
At Seguin, we played good football. Sometimes, the scoreboard didn’t end up the way we wanted to but at the end of the day, we still won because we’re still training young men to be men.
In your eyes, how much has Cedar Hill changed since the last time you were coaching there?
Back then, we were just starting to taste the cup of success and the expectations for us were to win, do well and try to play for a state championship. We didn’t know any better. But now, it’s everybody’s expectation. Everybody wants to win, everybody’s all in. There’s definitely a difference between no one expecting you to do it versus when people are expecting great things from you and we’re going to rise to the occasion.
When you take this type of job, those things are expected of you and those challenges and expectations are high and we don’t run from those. We embrace those. That will be the biggest change; we were just tasting the championship cup, no one knew that we could really do it. Now, everyone’s expecting us to do it.
Looking ahead to next season, what’s the read on your team so far and who are some players that will be key guys for you in 2017?
This group is going to be very unique because the outgoing seniors were so dominant for the last three years in this program and some of the kids that are up-and-coming were in the shadows of those seniors so it’s going to be a good coming out party for them.
We’ve got Josh Fleeks, an inside receiver and big-time recruit. He’s got great hands, great athletic ability and he’s going to be a staple for our offense.
We’ve also got Cameron Fleming at running back and he is going to be a beast for us. He’s going to do some outstanding things with the football in his hands. He’s a 10.5, 100 guy and he can just fly. He has that home run hitting ability every time he gets the football in his hands so I’m definitely looking forward to seeing those guys play.
What is your relationship now with Coach McGuire and how do you think he’ll do at Baylor?
It’s been great. He was actually here at the school recruiting on Wednesday. We’ve talked just about every day and he’s been a friend of mine for over 20 years. We grew up in these coaching ranks together all the way back to when we were assistant coaches for JV football.
We’ve leaned on each other a lot throughout our careers and I’m very excited for him and what has happened in his life with the new opportunity at Baylor. He’s going to be a dynamic recruiter here in the Dallas-Fort Worth area and that job fits him to a T.
How special is it for you to come back to Cedar Hill and lead a program that you had a hand in building up?
It’s really special. You feel like get the opportunity to finish what you started. You feel like you were here at the early stages of success and I was able to catapult that success into a head coaching job. Now after getting that head coaching experience, having the opportunity to lead a program that you helped build a foundation for is very exciting.
It’s awfully rewarding to be able to come back to a community that knows you, that understands your heart and has a really good idea of what type of man they are getting. These kids deserve our best and that’s what we’re going to give them.
