What does it take to be a successful high school coach?

How about a dash of strategic acumen mixed with cupfuls of motivation needed to reach through the distractions of adolescence?

Westlake boys soccer coach John Campbell had plenty of both while leading the Chaps to a stunning playoff run that didn’t end until the Class 5A state semifinals. Westlake ended the season with a 19-6-3 record and the school’s first appearance at the state tournament since 1983, which helped Campbell earn the Westlake Picayune’s 2009-10 Coach of the Year award.

More impressively, Campbell provided stability to a program searching for solid footing since the departure of John Fitzsimons in 2006. In that span, Westlake had three coaches prior to Campbell’s promotion to the head spot.

Campbell’s inaugural season came with a handful of gifted players such as striker Dillon Short, goalie Dylan Shomaker and midfielder Bailey Hinners. However, it also came with some baggage; the Chaps missed the playoffs in 2009 for only the second time in school history, and they were an afterthought compared to District 25-5A favorites such as Bowie and Anderson.

Guided by Campbell, the Chaps shrugged off the memories of 2009 and seized the district title. Campbell not only harnessed the skills of players such as Short and Hinners, but he turned a set of sturdy but unspectacular defenders into a lockdown unit. Other teams in Texas may have won more matches, but no coach in the state turned around a program like Campbell.

Honorable mention

For a generation, the Westlake football team ran the same plays in the same system with the same results. But in 2009, new coach Darren Allman arrived from Odessa Permian with new plays, a new system – and the same results. Allman led the Chaps to a 13-3 record and a spot in the Class 5A Division I state title game. Along the way, he displayed a panache for tough play calls – bypassing a tying field goal for a fourth-down run on the last play of a playoff game against against Madison, for example – and an undeniable will to win that coupled well with Westlake’s history.

With a strong set of seniors replaced by a bevy of youngsters, Westlake girls soccer coach Rennie Rebe could have been pardoned for expecting a rebuilding season. Instead, the second-year coach led the Chaps to a 20-8-2 record, a share of the District 25-5A title and a spot in the Region IV championship match. And Rebe reached those goals despite having as many freshmen as seniors in the starting lineup as well as converted striker Sara Gross between the pipes.