Friday morning on KOXE, Bangs ISD Superintendent Dr. Josh Martin (photo right) introduced Jason Cole as the new head football coach and athletic director for the Bangs Dragons, a coach already familiar with the school and its student athletes.
Cole, who served as offensive coordinator on the Dragons’ 7-5 bi-district championship team this past fall, is replacing Kyle Maxfield, who left for Austin’s Brentwood Christian after five seasons in which he guided Bangs to a 25-22 overall record with three playoff trips and a bi-district title.
“Myself and the Board of Trustees (Thursday) night found a heck of a guy to be our new athletic director and head football coach,” Martin said. “We’re real excited about the direction we went. We set out with some ideas … we wanted someone that didn’t just want an AD and head football coach job, but someone that wanted to be at Bangs. We don’t feel this is a starter job, we have high expectations for athletics and academics throughout, and we wanted somebody that could live up to those. But we really focused on someone that could come in and build a program, not just be the football coach but be the athletic director that can work with our girls and boys from elementary up. We had a guy on staff in Jason Cole that clicked all those boxes.”
Cole spent eight years as a head football coach and athletic director at Thrall and Quanah before joining Maxfield’s staff prior to last season as the offensive coordinator.
“I’ve been coaching 23 years or so,” Cole said. “This past spring we applied at Bangs and we had a criteria of what we wanted for our family, for our kids. We wanted a smaller school with excellent academics and great facilities and the chance for us to come in and be a part of it. I was very grateful to Dr. Martin and Kyle Maxfield for letting us come. Then when we got here, we just fell in love with it even more.”
Regarding his coaching philosophy, Cole said, “We want to have a winning culture and a positive culture. We have all the kids doing the track workout, coming after school, doing extra. We’re going to work hard and I told them in the interview if this is not what you want then I’m not your guy. We’re going to have all the kids working, and we’re going to be positive with them.”
Cole continued, stating, ‘“We feel like we had a really good fall, a really good football team that overachieved as far as the expectation outside. We’re in the middle of basketball right now and this spring we really want to set things off. We feel like we’re going to have some really good track teams and baseball and softball teams. When we roll in we want to look good, act good and play hard. We feel like this spring you’re going to see some big improvement.”
The Dragons averaged 30 points and 322 yards – 240 rushing and 82 passing – per game under Cole’s tutelage, and Bangs scored 61 points in its bi-district playoff victory over Nocona.
“We knew Coach Cole as an offensive coordinator, but he’d been an athletic director before at prior stops,” Martin said. “He came in and presented his vision and his plan for where he wants athletics to go and really blew us all away. He has a very detailed plan but more importantly Coach Cole knows our kids, he knows our coaches, he knows our community and he wanted to be a Bangs Dragon. He wanted that as much as he wanted the opportunity. We have full confidence he’s going to be the guy to take us to the next level.”
Cole posted a 35-21 record in six seasons at Thrall with five playoff berths and a pair of bi-district championships. Cole then went 8-14 in two seasons at Quanah, winning district and bi-district titles in his first year at the school.