People ask me why a high school football coach who teaches all day would go and start a business on top of it. Fair question. Coaching already eats your nights, your weekends and most of your summer. Why add more?
The honest answer is that I didn't set out to build a business. I set out to fix a problem I kept running into on the sideline. Every business I've started began that way, and the Lonestar Coaches Network is the biggest one.
Coaching can be a lonely job
From the outside, coaching looks like the ultimate team sport. You've got a staff, a locker room full of kids, a whole town in the stands on Friday night. But a lot of coaches will tell you the job can be lonely.
When your quarterback can't read a coverage, when a parent is in your inbox at 11 p.m., when you're a young coach trying to figure out how to get your next job, you don't always have somebody to call. The guys on your own staff are just as buried as you are. The coaches who could really help are three districts over, and you only see them for a handshake after the game.
I've been coaching for ten seasons now, starting in the Baylor football program and then at Troy, Carter-Riverside and Burleson. Everywhere I went, I saw the same thing. The coaches who grew the fastest weren't always the smartest. They were the ones with other coaches in their corner.
It started with a clinic
In 2024 a clinic left Texas, and a lot of us felt that hole. So I got together with John Bronkhorst, Josh Christian and Edgar Vazquez and we started the One Back Offensive Clinic. We wanted a place where coaches could talk real football, steal some good ideas and spend a weekend around people who get it.
Then came the Lonestar Coaches Clinic. Larry and Marcia Zierlein built it into the largest and longest-running football coaching clinic in Texas, and Marcia ran its operations for 29 years. When it paused, I didn't want to see that legacy just go away. Today I'm proud to carry it forward as its director, and the two clinics share one weekend at the Waco Convention Center. That's a responsibility I don't take lightly. We're standing on the shoulders of people who served coaches for almost three decades.
One Back, One Purpose, Coaches First
That's our motto, and it's more than a slogan on a T-shirt. It's the filter for every decision we make.
- Great football. Coaches should leave a clinic with something they can put on the field Monday, not just a notebook full of stuff they'll never use.
- Real fellowship. Some of the most important conversations at a clinic happen in the hallway, at lunch or in the parking lot. We build time for that on purpose.
- Support all year. Coaching doesn't stop in July. That's why the network has a film library coaches can use all year and consultations for staffs that want help with their offense, their quarterbacks or their technology.
- Coaches first. Every choice starts with one question: does this actually help a coach?
What started as one clinic is now a network of more than a thousand coaches. I've got a team of interns and coaches helping make it happen, and I couldn't do it without them.
Then we kept fixing problems
Once you start listening to coaches, you hear the same problems over and over. So we kept building.
Young coaches told me how hard it was to find a job. You'd spend hours digging through a dozen different district websites trying to find out who was hiring. So I built Coaching Openings, one job board for coaches.
Athletic directors and head coaches kept telling me about holes in their schedule. A team drops you in the spring, and now you're making phone calls for weeks trying to fill a Friday. So I built Game Openings, where you can find an open date and book a game in a few clicks.
And because athletic directors are juggling more than anybody, I'm building SchoolSportsAD, one place to run schedules, teams, volunteers and game day.
None of those started as a business plan. Every one of them started as a coach telling me, "Man, I wish somebody would fix this."
Why it matters to me
I got into coaching because it gave me the chance to love and serve young people and help them grow into the leaders of tomorrow. The best thing I can do for those kids is help their coaches get better. A better coach means a better practice, a better locker room and a better young man walking out of it.
I also know I'm not here by accident. I'm a heart surgery survivor who's walked away from more than a few close calls. I don't get to take credit for any of it. But God. So if He's given me energy and a few good ideas, I want to spend them serving the people who serve kids every day.
That's why I built Lonestar. Not for the money, and not for my name on a banner. Because coaches need other coaches, and nobody should have to coach alone.