HOUSTON - - Kenny Perry and I couldn't walk more than 20 yards at THSCA Coaching School without someone waving him down for a handshake, slaps on the back, or even a bear hug.

I was raised on Texas High School Football, but I'm overwhelmed by the amount of high school and college coaches mulling around the George R. Brown Convention Center in Houston on Monday, July 17. The three-day conference set a record this year with 16,066 total attendance. It feels like Perry knows at least half of them intimately.

This is only his second year as Texas Tech’s associate head coach, but Perry’s been making this trip nearly every summer since 1993. He spent 14 seasons as a high school head coach, including a prolific 67–22 run at Arlington Bowie from 2006 to 2012. It takes me five minutes trying to keep up with him to realize why he was elected to THSCA’s Board of Directors during his time at Bowie. He's a walking Red Bull can.

We’re an odd duo making the rounds, a recent college-graduate writer getting his bearings and an alpha dog coach entirely in his element. I’ve shaken more hands in three hours than in the past year combined. Perry tells everyone I’m shadowing him for today, a crash course for my first-ever Coaching School, and they all feign surprise with some variation of, “You’ve got your work cut out following him.” It’s all ribbing indicative of longtime friends.

Perry has good reason to be cheerful after his and head coach Joey McGuire’s first year in Lubbock. Texas Tech is coming off its first winning record in Big 12 Conference play since 2009. The Red Raiders have gone a decade without a top 30-ranked recruiting class, but their 2024 cycle is hovering at No.31 with 18 total commits. All of them are from Texas.

I planned to get a glimpse on that day of what’s led to the recruiting surge, and now I see a coach inextricably linked to three generations of Texas high school football.

He catches up with retired Abilene head coach Steve Warren, who, in the 2009 Class 5A Division II playoffs, knocked off McGuire’s Cedar Hill juggernaut and Perry’s Bowie squad in back-to-back weeks en route to a state championship. It’s a loss that still gnaws at McGuire.

Then he and Bryan High School offensive coordinator Michael Waldie reminisce about their playing days. Perry played running back under the legendary Eddy Peach at Arlington Lamar, and his 1986 team entered a regular-season finale against Euless Trinity needing to lose by less than a touchdown to make the playoffs despite a 9–0 record. Lamar fell 20-10; as a result, a then-sophomore Waldie got moved up to varsity for the playoffs. Now, Waldie coaches Bryan wide receiver Tyson Turner, a Texas Tech commit.

Later he bumps into Elkins High School offensive line coach Leroy Truitt, a former teammate at the University of Houston. After, Evan Fairs bounds up to Perry for a hug. The Fulshear High School wide receiver coach played under Perry when the coach was a Kansas assistant from 2015 to 2018.

It’s 12:45 p.m., and Perry has to get to his guest spot on a panel of former high school coaches turned collegiate in 15 minutes. There’s no more time to chop it up with friends. He puts his head down and busts over to the auditorium without getting roped into a conversation. I think it will be impossible, but Perry makes it to the panel with minutes to spare and sits on the stage next to his current head coach. Of course, all the high school coaches in the audience also want to hear from McGuire, who won three state titles during an illustrious run at Cedar Hill.

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When McGuire and Perry hit the recruiting trail, they take a vested interest in the coaches’ lives and the players they’re scouting. It’s no secret that Perry eventually wants to be a head coach in college football, so over the years when he served as an assistant at TCU, Kansas and SMU, he picked up strategies from high school head coaches. Perry picked the brain of current UTSA head coach Jeff Traylor when he was at Gilmer. He saw Houston assistant Corby Meekins when he was at Spring Westfield. He spent time with Baylor quarterbacks coach Shawn Bell at Magnolia West. Perry loves watching guys coach.

“I watch guys knowing that, ‘Hey if I’m ever lucky enough to get a head job, I’m going to watch guys coach at spring ball. I’m going to see what they do,’” Perry said. “When they come speak at our clinics, I’m listening to what guys are saying to see if they know what the hell they’re talking about.”

McGuire has spoken openly about his high school roots since he joined Matt Rhule’s staff at Baylor in 2017. He spent 14 years building Cedar Hill from a program that had never won a playoff game when he took over to a dynasty. For a long time, McGuire never planned on leaving the high school ranks. But he hasn’t disassociated with his high school mentality since getting the head job at Texas Tech.

In his first few weeks in Lubbock, McGuire made a deal with his equipment staff that he’d never wear white pants on natural grass. For years, he’d soaked uniforms after Cedar Hill football games and quickly learned those pesky grass stains refuse to wash out.

“Some people always say, ‘Well, that’s Joey trying to be all nice to the coaches and everything,” McGuire said. “But I mean this, I’m a high school coach that gets to coach college football. There is not one single thing that we don’t do every single day at Texas Tech that we didn’t do at Cedar Hill, Texas.”

There are three key parties a program must win over if they’re to earn a commitment. There’s the actual player who’ll one day suit up, the parents sending off their child to be nurtured for four years and, finally, the high school coach.

The high school coach links the player’s family and the college. McGuire and Perry understand the importance of building a relationship of trust with that coach so he can feel confident giving a stamp of approval. They’ve spent double-digit years at powerhouse high school programs that college coaches flocked to for recruits. Above all, high school coaches want honesty from the college guys about their intentions, and Hutto High School head coach Will Compton knows Texas Tech is always telling the truth because they’ve been in his situation.  

“Their availability and just being able to call them up and talk some, whether it be about football or X’s and O’s or anything,” Compton said. “That credibility. And the fact that as a former high school coach they’ve been in your shoes. They’ve been there as a head coach trying to get their kids recruited. They understand the things you’re going through and the questions you’re answering from parents.”

Compton has developed a great relationship with Texas Tech offensive coordinator Zach Kittley as he recruited Compton’s quarterback, four-star Will Hammond. The pair first met a couple years back when Compton was still at Buda Johnson. Even though Compton said his school didn’t have a Texas Tech-caliber player on the roster at that time, Kittley still made a point to stop by an introduce himself.

Then when Compton got to Hutto, and Hammond racked up over 3,400 all-purpose yards and 30 passing touchdowns, Kittley popped back in the picture to recruit and knew exactly who he needed to talk to.

“We’re able to just sit there and kind of talk some ball and some Xs and Os,” Compton said. “(We) talk some old school Air Raid up to some new stuff they’re doing now. It makes it a lot of fun for me as a coach, the Xs and Os part, but then knowing someone’s going to be there for a kid who you care a lot about and you’re excited to see what the future holds for him.”

Much like Compton’s experience, Pflugerville Weiss head coach Vernon Hughes said Texas Tech prioritizes building relationships with the high school coaches. Tech earned a commitment from Weiss safety Peyton Morgan, but weren’t just coming in to talk to him and get out of dodge. Hughes said McGuire observed their workout, then sat in Hughes’s office for 30 minutes to talk everything from football to life.

“To me, he was just super down to earth, super genuine,” Hughes said. “He was legit, and not every coach that comes in will sit down and take the time out to actually get to know another coach like that. They’re always there to kind of come in and (look for) what you can do for them and tell me about this kid or that kid.”

Good things happen when the Tech coaches aren’t solely focused on the one player they came to see. McGuire watched as Hughes stood off to the side catching up with one other and watching Weiss go through drills when McGuire startled suddenly.

“Wait, who the hell is that kid?” Hughes recalled McGuire asking.

Now, Adrian Wilson is a rising junior wide receiver for Weiss with a 6-foot-2-inch frame and just under 20 offers. At this time, he was an underclassman that hardly anyone knew about. But McGuire saw the potential because he was taking time to watch practice, and Hughes remembers fondly how he rushed off to make a phone call muttering how he couldn’t believe they didn’t know about this kid.

Granted, Texas Tech coaches have more time to talk with high school coaches and watch practices because they run their recruiting like a professional organization.

Texas Tech director of player personnel James Blanchard was on the first plane to Lubbock with McGuire when he was hired in October 2021. Blanchard was the director of recruiting at Baylor when he and McGuire worked under Matt Rhule, and Blanchard even followed Rhule to the Panthers for his NFL stint.

McGuire and Blanchard now use Rhule’s recruiting strategy at Texas Tech. Blanchard oversees the scouting department and grinds away, finding verified athlete measurements and pouring over their high school film. Blanchard and his crew are solely responsible for choosing who Texas Tech offers. The more seasoned coaches like Perry and defensive coordinator Tim DeRuyter were baffled when they first found out they would have no say in who Tech would recruit, but McGuire quickly assuaged their concerns.

“I said, ‘Well, Find an offer that you’re going to disagree with, number one, and number two, get ready to coach a lot more football. Because you’re not going to sit there and have to watch film,’” McGuire said at Big 12 Media Days. “We’re going to come into your office and say, ‘Hey, this is who we’re offering, this is who you’re recruiting, go recruit them.’ And it eliminates maybe a lot of unnecessary time watching film of position coaches.”

So the coaching staff is solely focused on coaching football and developing relationships, while Blanchard and the recruiting staff are exclusively focused on building their recruiting boards.

As a result, Texas Tech is usually one of the first colleges to offer the top prospects on its list. 12 of the Red Raiders’ 18 commits in the Class of 2024 got their first offer from Texas Tech, including Peyton Morgan, who got the offer 20 days after McGuire got the job. Texas Tech was Hammond’s third offer overall, but he was committed to them before schools like Oregon, Penn State, Auburn and Texas A&M even offered.

The current recruiting process for high school kids is highly stressful. They’re not only deciding where to spend the next four years of their life but fielding lucrative NIL offers and monitoring the college football transfer portal to see if there will be playing time for them on the roster. Texas Tech sows the seed early when they offer before many of the other big-time schools, and it’s tough to forget the first one that took a chance on you.

“I always say the first one that gives you an offer is the first one to believe in you,” Hughes said. “A lot of coaches can come out and talk to the guys, but when they actually extend that full scholarship offer, to me, those are the ones that believe in you. You should always keep those guys on the radar.”

The Red Raider staff has deep-rooted connections in almost every area of the state. Perry and McGuire are synonymous with DFW football. But defensive line coach Zarnell Fitch was also a high school coach in the area at Dallas Lincoln and spent time as TCU’s Director of High School Relations. Tight ends coach Josh Cochran has East Texas covered. He played at Hallsville and later was an assistant coach at Lindale High School under his brother, Chris. Zach Kittley was never a high school coach, but he was a student assistant and later a graduate assistant at Texas Tech from 2013 to 2017, so he's entrenched in West Texas.

The coaching staff has name recognition with high school coaches and a built-in trust because of their Texas high school football background. Then they added a professional-style scouting department that freed them up to build relationships. It’s resulted in the most positive momentum for the program in a decade.

“I think it’s great when we get these high school coaches that are able to move up the ranks,” Compton said. “For us as high school coaches, it’s easier for us to reach out to some of those guys as compared to someone who’s not as familiar with the area or maybe with us as coaches and our path as we’re going up.”