After eight days of searching and 20 minutes of board deliberation, El Campo ISD trustees unanimously offered and approved a two-year athletic director’s contract to Travis Reeve, currently head football coach of New Caney High School.
Reeve has been a head coach for the last 11 seasons and he’s most known for his time in Cuero where he won a state championship in 2018 for the Gobblers. For the past three years, he was the head coach at New Caney, a 6A school and this past season they went 11-1 and won an undefeated district championship, falling to Tomball in the second round of the playoffs.
“I’m very familiar with El Campo. It’s a place that has a long-standing tradition of success and great support,” Reeve said. “We’re super excited about being part of the Ricebird tradition and building upon it.”
Reeve’s ties to the area are from former Ricebird head coach Wayne Condra. Reeve graduated from Victoria High School, where he played football. The head coach at Victoria was his father Mark Reeve and the defensive coordinator was Condra.
“He’s a longtime family friend,” Reeve said. “We visit all the time and certainly when this position came open, we visited about it and he had nothing but great things to say about his time in El Campo.”
Along with knowing Condra, Cuero and El Campo have played each many times over the years in different sports. Condra and Reeve went head-to-head in football in 2018 and 2019, with each school grabbing a win.
“El Campo is a special place. It’s a place that has a lot of tradition and a place that’s known for having a lot of pride and community support. Having competed against El Campo over the years and knowing the people that played and coached in El Campo, it’s a unique place that our family wants to come and be a part of. The other part of it we missed being in a small town, one school, one place. Leaving New Caney is difficult, they treated us extremely well there, but we felt like El Campo was the type of place that if we were going to leave, it would be to come to a place like El Campo.”
Reeve’s first Ricebird win next season will be the 100th of his career. Overall, he’s complied a 99-40 record and made the playoffs all but once in his 11 seasons.
The New Caney coach was a standout for the district, officials said, due to his experience as a coach and his repertoire with others.
“The first thing that made him stand out was his focus on relationships with kids, faculty and staff. The character curriculum he has written as well and how we taught it to the kids,” El Campo Superintendent Bob Callaghan said. “Friday night is important in El Campo and across the state. He’s had some great success at New Caney High school.”
Reeve is married with three kids, two who graduated from college and a son that will be entering eighth grade. Winning, of course, will be the goal for El Campo, but the new head coach shared he wants to try and positive influence in his students’ lives.
“We want to win and we want to win championships, but at the same time we want to do things that demonstrate that we care more about our players as people than athletes,” Reeve said. “We care a lot about them as athletes because we want to win, but we feel like athletics is an opportunity to make a difference in young people’s lives and we’re going to be very intentional about that. We’re certainly not perfect, but that’s really our goal is to make an impact, serve our kids and serve our community and at the same time win a lot of games and build a program that people can be proud of.”
Former El Campo athletic director Chad Worrell announced his resignation last week, the hunt was on for a new director to fill the coach’s shoes immediately, and the plan was to hire fast.
“We posted the job Monday afternoon March 6, as an anticipated opening. We received well over (40) applicants and began vetting those immediately. As they came in, I would vet them, call their references. I called the qualified applicants and narrowed the search to just a couple (candidates),” Callaghan said.
While the hiring process was quick, officials are happy with the choice to hire Reeve.
“It was a very expedited process, and it was because we have a great number of students in the middle of their spring sports, golf, tennis, soccer, baseball and softball. We are in the midst of a large number of students being involved and we needed a leader,” Callaghan said, adding “If I didn’t feel Travis was a perfect fit, I would have kept looking. The expedited fashion did not cause me to pick a candidate.”
Reeve’s contract will pay him $128,500 per year, a little more than $10,000 more than Worrell when he was brought in 2021.
The plan is for Reeve to start when students get back from Spring Break on March 21, Worrell left on March 6.
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