After being without a head coach (officially) since early December, New Braunfels Canyon and Comal ISD made it official on Thursday evening promoting offensive coordinator Nate Leonard to head football coach.

Leonard, who has been the Cougars offensive coordinator the last two seasons, replaces Travis Bush, who departed on December 11 to begin the new football program at the University of Texas-Rio Grande Valley.

Leonard, a native of McKinney, played his high school ball at McKinney High and is quite familiar with the San Antonio area having been a four-year letterman and all-conference performer at UTSA from 2011-2014. He’s spent plenty of time as an assistant in the San Antonio area as well coaching at San Antonio Memorial, Seguin and San Antonio Reagan.

In 2018, Leonard joined the staff at Duke University where he served as GA on staff for the Blue Devils working with the offensive line. He returned to Texas in the spring of 2019 where he joined the staff at Clear Lake and in the spring of 2021 he returned to the San Antonio area when he was hired by Coach Bush to be the offensive coordinator at Canyon.

Leonard is the third coordinator who worked under Coach Bush to earn a head coaching job in the past three seasons, following Luling's Nate Langford, and Fort Stockton's Jeremy Hickman.

Leonard will take over a Canyon squad that posted an impressive 9-2 record a year ago, but fell in the first round of the playoffs in a tough bi-district draw. They’ll face that same draw in 2023 in a stacked Region III race in Class 5A-Division I.