La Grange Hires Kyle Cooper as New Football Coach/AD

La Grange football fans should get ready to see the Leopards throw the football – a lot – this fall.

Friday the La Grange school board approved the hiring of Kyle Cooper, whose Ponder High School team led not just Texas but the entire nation in passing yards per game last season, as the new Leps head football coach and athletic director.

Cooper’s team averaged 425 yards per game through the air in 2022.

“He likes to throw it,” said La Grange superintendent Andy McHazlett. “And they go fast.” Out of a field of 133 applicants, a La Grange selection committee chose Cooper and presented his name to the school board Friday, where he was unanimously voted to receive a 2.5 year contract.

Cooper said his tentative start date is March 6. “My wife is from Evant, I’m from Wimberley. We’re small town people and we’re excited to get back to a community like that,” said Cooper, during a phone interview Sunday during a break from getting his house ready to put on the market. “We’ve heard nothing but great things about La Grange.”

Cooper said he sees a lot of similarities between La Grange and Gatesville, where he was head coach from 2007 to 2018. In 2019 and 2020 he was an assistant coach under former Baylor head coach Art Briles at Mount Vernon High School, where he learned more about the up-tempo spread offense that made Briles’ Baylor teams so potent.

He brought that to 3A Ponder (just north of the Metroplex in Denton County), which had little football history to speak of.

The school just started playing football in 2012 and still has never won a playoff game.

Competing in what Cooper called “the toughest 3A district in the state” Cooper’s Ponder teams went 4-6 in 2021 and 3-7 in 2022, in spite of their offensive prowess.

But improvement was on the horizon.

He organized the first freshmen football teams in school history and both subvarsities had winning records after those same kids had gone nearly winless in junior high.

“The turnaround was coming,” McHazlett said. “We vetted him pretty hard and found people he didn’t even know we knew. Every one of them were like, ‘you’re not going to find a better guy’ ... As soon as he came in, the passion he has for his job was evident ... One of the things he kept saying was ‘we have six years that we have these kids and we mold them for the next 60 years of their lives.’ He kept talking about the relationships with the kids. He talked about the importance of girls athletics and the total sports program. From the second he came in there was a different feel about him compared to the other candidates. It didn’t take long to jump on the Kyle Cooper bandwagon.”

Cooper said the opportunity to be an athletic director again was another thing that attracted him to La Grange. He was the head football coach but not the AD at Ponder.

“I also coached against Mr. McHazlett when he was at Burnet,” Cooper said. “That’s leadership you want to follow.”

Cooper arrives in La Grange with his wife Ginger, who is a realtor but is also a former coach and teacher.

“We’ll see what she wants to do after we get down there,” Cooper said.

Their oldest son Clifton is a senior and threw for 4,254 yards and 41 TDs last year and has accepted a scholarship to Henderson State, a D-2 school in Arkansas, to play football.

Younger son Clayton is a sophomore and was the quarterback on the Ponder JV team last season. Daughter Campbell will be a freshmen next year.

During the interview process Cooper had a chance to watch the Leopards during their athletic period.

“He was excited about what he saw,” McHazlett said.

“I’ve watched quite a bit of film already,” Cooper said. “There are some exciting guys in La Grange.”

But could the Leps going to lead the nation in passing next year like Ponder did?

“We’re high school football coaches and our job is to take the tools we have and put them in the best situation,” Cooper said. “But passing will be a big part of that.”

The Kyle Cooper file

• Angelo State University grad (where he played tight end)

• Coaching stops include: Angelo State, Liberty University, Odessa Permian, Rockwall, Gatesville (head coach), Mount Vernon, Ponder (head coach).

As a head coach 14 years; 70-80-0 overall

2007 Gatesville 2-8-0 2008 Gatesville 5-5-0 2009 Gatesville 7-4-0* 2010 Gatesville 5-6-0* 2011 Gatesville 4-6-0 2012 Gatesville 13-1-0* 2013 Gatesville 3-7-0 2014 Gatesville 4-6-0 2015 Gatesville 6-7-0 * 2016 Gatesville 4-6-0 2017 Gatesville 7-4-0 * 2018 Gatesville 3-7-0 ---staff, Mount Vernon- 2021 Ponder 4-6-0 2022 Ponder 3-7-0 * denotes playoff appearance