By George Fairchild Staff Writer

Less than 24 hours after the resignation of football coach Joe McBride, Coppell ISD Athletics Director John Crawford announced defensive coordinator Mike DeWitt had been promoted to head coach on Feb. 4.

“[Coach DeWitt] is a hard working, dedicated coach and he’s a great person to lead Coppell football next year,” junior tight end Connor Williams said.

DeWitt has worked under McBride in the past, spending time at a middle school that fed to Hebron where McBride was the defensive coordinator and then as the defensive coordinator at Frisco Liberty where McBride assumed the role of head coach.

In 2009, when McBride moved to Coppell, he brought DeWitt with him to serve as defensive coordinator.

“Coach McBride has been my mentor for the last 12 years,” Dewitt said. “A lot of the things will be the same.  We will still have the same philosophy of playing great defense and offensively we will still run the football.”

The Cowboys have stuck to the same philosophy of being a very physical minded team that plays great defense since Mike Fuller, who is now the head coach at Colleyville Heritage, left in 2006.

When speculation over the departure of McBride arose, Crawford began his process of hiring a new coach and realized that the best man for the job was already on staff.

“We wanted a person with a tremendous amount of character and integrity about them,” Crawford said. “We wanted a head coach that was going to be committed to playing great defense, that would have a physical presence about them offensively, be very committed to developing our athletes strength and conditioning wise, and also very committed to playing great special teams as well.  All the phases that you have to have to have a winning football team and we realized that we already had that person on our staff and that was Coach DeWitt.”

The Cowboys are losing a large number of seniors next year, including defensive end Solomon Thomas (Stanford), defensive back Chris Adkins (Southern Illinois) and offensive lineman Bill Weber (Toledo), but the players returning next year are excited to work under their new head coach.

“He’s a great man,” junior running back Charles West said. “He’s a man of God, he carries himself well, he supports everyone around him and I’m excited to work with him next year.”

 Despite the recent promotion and hype surrounding him, DeWitt has remained humble about his successes.

“I try not to think of ‘I’ and instead I think of ‘We’ as a staff because I really think that if that staff wasn’t a great staff then I probably would not have gotten the opportunity,” DeWitt said. “The fact that there are really good men working with me is a big part of it and this is a team deal.”

Dewitt said he felt honored when offered the job and is determined to improve every aspect of the football team next year.

“I’m really looking forward to it,” DeWitt said. “It’s a good opportunity, we’re going to keep doing what we’re doing.  We’re going to work hard and really get after it.”