When Garland Naaman Forest head coach Bill Patterson bolted for Justin Northwest less than a month ago, it probably caught the Rangers and Garland ISD athletic director Homer B. Johnson a bit off-guard.
Patterson had built Naaman Forest from a perennial district cellar dweller into a team that shared a district championship in the highly competitive Garland/Rockwall 5A district and had back-to-back 9-3 seasons. In fact, the Rangers would've been 10-2 last season if not for a nondistrict forfeit due to use of an ineligible player.
Anyway, Patterson left to take the head coaching job at Justin Northwest, who happens to be in a tough 5A district along with the likes of Colleyville Heritage and Euless Trinity -- a district that matches up with one of the toughest 5A districts in the state in the first round of the playoffs, which includes Hebron, Flower Mound Marcus, Southlake Carroll and Coppell, who knocked Northwest out in the first round last year.
Naaman Forest went two rounds deep in the playoffs before losing to perennial power Copperas Cove by just a touchdown, and the Rangers have a decent amount of talent coming back.
So it looks like Johnson and the Rangers have found their guy, and they didn't go too far to get it.
The Rangers are set to hire Mark Elam as their new head coach, pending school board approval, The Dallas Morning News reports.
Elam spent the past four seasons as the Rockwall ISD athletic director after coaching at Rockwall HS for seven seasons, compiling a less-than-stellar 29-41 record.
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With that said, Elam is probably leaving Rockwall while the leaving is good. The Yellow Jackets are in an insanely tough district where it could be tough to compete for a while after the opening of Rockwall-Heath HS, which made a run to the fourth round of the playoffs before losing to eventual state champion Sulphur Springs. The district includes Highland Park, Richardson Pearce and Royse City. The Yellow Jackets went 4-6 last year.
Adam Boedeker is a sports writer/blogger for the Denton Record-Chronicle. He turns 29 today, and isn't real happy about it.
