On the Sidelines with Dan Sousa
By Dan Sousa
LoudounPrepSports.com Senior Content Editor
Ashburn (Nov. 7, 2008) – Heritage High School football coach Wes Driskill, a coach that I have no problem calling “one of the good guys”, is calling it quits after tonight’s final regular season game against Leesburg rival Loudoun County.
Driskill told his team Wednesday that after seven years as the school’s first and only head football coach and after more than 30 years coaching high school football, he was hanging up his whistle to spend more time with his family.
“A lot of them were shocked,” said Driskill about his team’s reaction.
If you have followed my coverage of Loudoun sports in these “Internet pages” then you know that I live and work in the community and Driskill’s son Nick and my son Cooper have gone to the same schools and are juniors at Stone Bridge High School this year. It is not unusual for me to look over on a weeknight and see the Driskill’s dining at Glory Days or some other local eatery.
Driskill truly is a family man and you can surely hear the emotion in his voice when he talks about stepping down to spend time with his family that had no choice but to do with less of their father, husband or son over the years as coaching high school football is nearly an around-the-clock, around-the-calendar job these days.
“I’m thankful I’ve got to do something I love to do for this long,” said Driskill who started the Potomac Falls program in 1997 and then moved to Heritage in 2002 to start the Pride program. Before that he was an assistant coach at Broad Run for 14 years and at Virginia High School in Bristol for seven years. “There has been some crying … I do love coaching … but I have come to the realization that I need to spend more time as a husband, father and son.”
These are the type of decisions that take years to form and then events can happen that crystalize the resolve for change. For Driskill it was watching two of his aunts pass away this year. Or maybe it was only making one of Nick’s cross country races this fall.
Then there is his younger son Trent who will be playing the Bulldog football program next fall on Thursday nights and Heritage’s move up to AAA and the Cedar Run District and Northwest Region only means more travel time and more time away for Heritage football staff.
Driskill enters tonight’s game with a record of 32-37 at Heritage and co-championship in 2005 but never a playoff berth as it seemed to be a game here or even a player there, that kept the Pride from postseason. At Potomac Falls, Driskill was 22-28, with the Panthers being tossed right into the Northern Region as a new school. A lifetime record of 54-65, but the real record is that type of character and values that Driskill displayed.
I guess the biggest compliment I can pay Driskill is that he is the type of coach that I wouldn’t have minded my son playing for. And as a father, there is no higher compliment. We will miss covering Driskill come next year but we continue to look forward to running into him at SB football games and dinners at Glory Days and I’m sure we will talk more about the “Glory Days” of when I used to cover his team.
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