Woods brings success back to Danville football
By Mark Ambrogi
The opportunity to come back home to coach at Danville Community High School was too good for K.C. Woods to pass up.
After one year as coach at Clinton Prairie, Woods had taken a team that was 1-7 in 2014 to 8-4 in 2015.
Danville head football coach K.C. Woods throws the ball during practice yesterday (Nov. 19). Woods was an all-state receiver for the Warriors as a senior in 2007. (Photo by Rick Myers)
“The people were great, so there weren’t a lot of jobs I was going to leave for, but it was the opportunity to come back home to a place that meant so much to me and where I had a lot of success as a player,” Woods said. “I even remember as a young water boy watching those teams have success. I thought how cool would it be to go and get some of those things back. Over the past four years, the kids have bought into bringing that back and it’s kind of happened for us.”
The Warriors had suffered three consecutive losing seasons when Woods took over in 2016.
Danville went from 2-8 in 2015 to 10-3 in Woods’ first season. The Warriors were 13-1, losing in the semistate in 2017. Danville slipped to 6-5 in 2018. After a sub 4-5 regular season against a tough schedule, the Warriors take an 8-5 record into a semistate home game with Class 3A No. 2 Heritage Hills (13-0) at 8 p.m., Friday (Nov. 22).
Woods said it’s another step in the process of sustaining a successful program.
“We think the bar has been set and we are going to have kids that can meet that standard,” Woods said.
Woods said a big factor initially in the turnaround was getting more talented players out for the team.
“We had to recruit our hallways a little bit,” he said. “We had guys play for us the last four years that hadn’t played in high school before. They had given it up in middle school or earlier. We also had to change the attitude. We were a little bit defeated and down, we had to get some passion infused back into the program. I think the coaches I brought with me really did a good job making sure that happened.”
Senior running back/safety Chandler Schubert said he noticed a change when Woods took over.
“It was just more of a wining culture,” Schubert said. “It brought us back to the older days when we good all the time.”
Woods, a 2008 Danville graduate, was a junior varsity quarterback as a sophomore. With four-year starting quarterback Colton Cooper in the same class, Woods moved to receiver spot as a junior. An all-state receiver as a senior, Woods played at Marian University.
“It was my junior year that things clicked,” he said. “Colton and I developed a great quarterback-wide receiver relationship.”
The Warriors were 11-2 in 2007, Woods’ senior year. Danville won the sectional and lost to Bishop Chatard in the regional.
Prior to taking the Clinton Prairie job, Woods was an assistant coach at Marian University, Zionsville and Pike.
Woods’ younger brother, Kody, who played at Danville and Pike, is the Warriors’ offensive line coach.
