Bonham High School didn’t have to look very far for its next head football coach. And Dale Trompler didn’t have to wait very long to find a new job.
A ready-made match was made quickly — in a little more than a week, actually — and Trompler, a Bonhi grad who’s won in the past, is the lone finalist for the vacant head football coach-athletic director position at Bonham, which is starving for football success after three long seasons in the wilderness.
“This will be my 19th year in coaching, and I had eight wonderful years in Wolfe City,” Trompler said Wednesday. “But everything I’ve done to this point has been pointed toward coming back home to work in a program I spent my (youth) in. It’s a job I’ve always wanted.”
The Bonham Independent School District board of trustees is expected to make the hiring official at its Monday night meeting.
Trompler replaces John Hall, who left nine days ago to take the head coach-AD job at Orange Grove after two seasons coaching the Warriors.
In his one season at Whitewright, Trompler’s depleted Tigers finished 2-8, missing the playoffs for the first time in a decade. Whitewright averaged 278 yards of offense per game, but allowed 402 on defense.
Trompler tendered his resignation on April 9 despite receiving a contract extension, and said Wednesday he did so for the best interest of the kids at Whitewright.
“When I took the job at Whitewright, it was a place we thought as a family we wanted to stay long-term,” Trompler said. “It became clear it wasn’t going to work out that way.”
So Trompler was without a job for two months.
“It was a very scary situation,” he said. “But I have a very strong faith. I prayed about it, and I feel like God doesn’t close one door without opening another.”
The door swung open on June 9, the day after Hall was hired at Orange Grove.
Bonham needed to act quickly, and so did Trompler. The day he learned of Hall’s hiring by Orange Grove, Trompler said, he drove to Bonham to hand-deliver his application to superintendent Sonny Cruse.
Trompler spent the 2007 season at Greenville, where he still presently lives, as offensive coordinator. Before that, at Wolfe City, Trompler went 45-40 from 1999-2006 and coached the Wolves to three consecutive district titles in his final three years there.
Trompler faces a huge retooling job at Bonham. The once-mighty Warriors last made the playoffs in 2005, when they won a district championship, but have posted a 6-24 record since as participation in football dwindled.
It’s Bonham’s worst three-year historical stretch since 1951-53, when the Warriors were 5-25.
“It’s a lot different situation (than Whitewright),” Trompler said. “I know the situation a lot better coming into it. It’s going to take time, but coach Hall had the program starting to move in the right direction. It’s up to me now to get the kids to come back out. Things will get turned around, and in a hurry.”
In a part of Texas already known for high coaching turnover, Trompler becomes the sixth Texomaland head coach to take a new job in what is becoming an extraordinarily busy year for moving vans.
Van Alstyne (Mikeal Miller), Anna (Curren McMahon), Whitewright (Jodie Stringer), Melissa (Seth Stinton) and Celeste (James Fielden) will take the field under new management this fall. All of those are first-year head coaches except for Stringer, who is starting his second stint at Whitewright.
The highest-profile job of them all is still open. Sherman High School is in the process of hiring a replacement for Drew Young, who announced his resignation June 1 to become athletic director at Durant.
