Woodland names Charles Wood as next head football coach
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Charles Wood, a long-time assistant coach at Woodland, has been named to take over the head coaching job. Photo by Kevin Brown
With a virtual revolving door of head football coaches over the past dozen seasons, maybe a coach who has been there for nearly a decade can steady the Woodland football program.
Woodland has named long-time assistant coach Charles Wood to take over the program.
Wood steps into the lead role after serving as an assistant football coach for seven of the past nine years for the Bobcats. He takes over for Kevin Smith, who retired after he was told in April that he would not be retained.
Wood is the sixth coach in the 13 seasons since Larry Strain left after the 2013-14 school year. None of the previous five coaches have lasted longer than three seasons.
“I try not to think about it just because I can’t control things that I didn’t have any hand in or I didn’t have anything to do with,” he said when asked about the many coaching changes at Woodland over the years. “And my main focus is on the kids, on moving forward, and on building what the program can be.”
Wood came to Woodland in 2017 as part of former head coach Jeremy Stanford’s coaching staff, and he has been at the school ever since. He has been an assistant coach under every head football coach in that time except for the two years when Joel Schrenk was the coach, when Wood had to step away from some of his coaching duties to tend to the health of his father.
He has served as the school’s head track and field coach since he arrived prior to the 2017-18 school year.
On the football field Wood has coached offensive line, defensive line, outside linebackers, running backs and has been the defensive coordinator for five years as well in his time at Woodland, but his role has always included bringing an energetic presence to the Bobcat sideline.
“Kind of what I bring to it is energy, is passion, is fire,” he said. “That’s a big part of just the process of it all. Just make sure the team feels up. If something bad happens don’t let them fall too low. Keep them up, keep the energy going because we both know that momentum swings can happen in an instant.
Because he has been around the team as an assistant he also has the advantage of familiarity with the players that will comprise the 2026 team. He says he will use that knowledge to craft a system that will maximize the strengths of those players.
“In terms of offense and defense, it starts off with knowing who you’ve got coming back, knowing the kids in the room, which works out to my advantage being there beforehand,” he said. “Really, we want to tailor the offense, tailor the defense to fit the kids that we’ve got. But my main thing is I want to play fast, I want to play physical, and I want to play a disciplined style of football.”
It will be a big senior class anchoring this year’s team, and that includes two key players returning in the offensive backfield. Starting quarterback Nate Herren and running back Garret Hendrix, who has rushed for over 1,000 yards in each of the past two seasons, will both return. But Woodland will have some holes to fill skill-wise and will miss the presence of Andrew Sanchez on the line of scrimmage on both sides of the ball.
“I’m excited about the group we’ve got coming back,” Wood said. “They’re a talented group, but they’re also very hard working. And they’ve got a lot of potential there still left to kind of draw out. So I’m excited to get started, excited to see where this all goes.”
With the school year just coming to a close, summer football activities have not ramped up fully. But workouts will begin next week, and the preparation for the fall will begin in earnest.
“I’m super excited about it. I’m fired up and ready to go,” Wood said. “I hope that the fan base feels the same way, I hope the people in the community feel the same way, I hope the kids feel the same way that I do about it.”
