More than 200 welcome new football coach Sterling Doty

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Dori Gunn gives new head football coach Sterling Doty a welcoming hug during a meet and greet held Tuesday night at Stephenville High School.

BY RUSSELL HUFFMAN
TheFlashToday.com

Tuesday night an estimated 200 fans, friends, family, and well-wishers got their chance to welcome Doty home at a meet and greet in the Stephenville High School cafeteria.
“This is a new era in Yellow Jacket football,” SHS athletic director Jarod Womack said as he began his introduction of Doty.

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“When we began this search we were looking for someone with a relentless work ethic, with a high degree of accountability who can hire and maintain a quality staff,” Womack said. “A coach that is demanding but still relatable to the student-athletes of this generation.”
Doty certainly has that pedigree, and it certainly doesn’t hurt that he was a member of the 1998 and 1999 state champion teams under coach Art Briles. It’s a little like the formula used in hiring Joseph Gillespie who produced a fifth state championship to go with the four Briles won in his time in Stephenville.
It’s undeniable Doty wanted his new job after taking a pay cut as he takes on the task of returning the Yellow Jackets to “Jerry World” and more of those golden footballs.
“Someone who wants to embrace the culture of Stephenville and it’s high school football,” Womack said.
Doty has been embracing that culture since 1994 when he first moved to Stephenville when his father Bob began his job as coach of the Tarleton State University rodeo team. He spoke about growing up in the Stephenville football program and the influences it had upon him.
Magnolia High School where Doty had been the coach since 2014 saw a remarkable turnaround and in only his second season Doty produced a 10-2 mark which was a record the school hadn’t seen in 50 years.
So what’s the game plan?
“We are going to coach them hard,” Doty said, “And we are going to love them hard. We are going to have a high standard on the football field and make them champions in life!”
After being on campus for two days, Doty admitted he was excited and ready to get started.

“We are going to honor the past. We are going to look up at the pictures in the green room and rely on them,” Doty said. “ But, we are going to live in the moment, and we are going to work in the moment. We are going to create a vision for you guys (pointing at players present) to be champions yourselves.”
Doty’s coaching methods will be about focusing on the daily process, and he’s already met with his players and talked about the nine teams on the 2019 schedule.
“We’ve talked about those teams, but we are going to focus on ‘the now’ and see how they handle themselves,” Doty said.

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