Thursday, March 27, 2025
Jose Aguirre will be Gatesville’s next head football coach pending school board approval. The hire was announced Jan. 31 and will become official with board approval at their next meeting Feb. 24.
Aguirre has been the defensive coordinator for Gatesville since 2022 and replaces Aaron Hunter. Hunter submitted his resignation Jan. 15 after three seasons as head coach.
The distance between the assistant coaches’ offices in the field house and the head football coach’s office is a matter of steps, but the journey to his first head job has included four different coaching stops and began before he had even played high school football.
“I have known that I wanted to be a teacher and a coach since I was in the eighth grade,” he said.
Most of Aguirre’s life was spent in the Austin area, and he was a member of the first graduating class at Akins High School before receiving a degree from Texas State University in 2008. He spent three years in Salado, seven at Round Rock High School, and three at Georgetown High School before joining Hunter in Gatesville in 2022.
Aguirre said that he and wife Amanda had long ago committed to not being a coaching family that moved after every season in search of the next job. Since coming to Gatesville, he said that conviction has become even more concrete. The Aguirre’s have two sons – Thomas (10) and Theo (7).
“When we came to Gatesville, it was a massive leap of faith. We had always been together in a bigger suburb or bigger town. And going to a small town, it was a big adjustment. But within six months Amanda said, ‘I don't want to go back to a big city’.” said Aguirre.
As Aguirre embraced his new role as defensive coordinator, he said that he and his family were quickly grafted into the fabric of the Gatesville community. So much so that he said he was recently told that he was “an outsider who is an insider.”
“And their statement was, you're an outsider but you made, you got here, and you poured yourself in this community. When I say it wasn't just me, it was our family. So, my wife and I, we coach youth soccer, we coach youth baseball, we coach youth basketball,” Aguirre said. “And I think by doing that, I think an overwhelming majority of the community saw us as people who are here. We want to be faithful people; we want what's best for the community.”
Aguirre cited a congratulatory phone call from Tim and Rebecca Hunter – parents of Aaron and Jacob Hunter – as another example of his family’s immersion into the Gatesville family.
“I've gotten very close to the Hunter family, so they feel as close as brothers,” he said.
The state of Texas is littered with high character men who simply didn’t get it done on the field. Helping Aguirre’s case for the Hornets head coaching job was also that he is a tremendous football coach.
In three seasons as defensive coordinator in which Aguirre helped lead, the Hornets have won 21 games, advanced to the postseason three times, captured two bi-district titles, and an area championship. In his time on the Round Rock staff, the Dragons turned in the best season in school history going four rounds deep. He knows that success on the field and in the classroom in addition to relationship-building is what makes great coaches.
“I think step one is aligning what are my core beliefs about what makes a good program. And then from there, meeting with the coaches and meeting with the kids, and everything reinforces those beliefs. And, so, the first actual staff meeting we had was (Feb. 3) at six, and the first thing we covered were our four pillars: belief, effort, discipline, and toughness. We do believe in something bigger than yourself. The earlier you realize that life is not about you and it's about how can you make people around you, the places around you better, the more fulfilling life is,” Aguirre said.
As the offseason progresses, Aguirre will start to install his own processes and instill his own convictions. But he also emphasized the desire and the need to keep the program’s momentum moving forward by leaning into the team – and the town’s – identity.
“We're a blue collar town. That's who we are. We have kids who wake up at 4:30 in the morning to feed their animals. You have a lot of kids that they go home and they weld. If there's a truck broken down, you got four or five kids working on the parking lot. You just have that kind of old-school mentality,” he said.
“That really starts at home, and then we've got to channel it to the football field to all the other sports that we play,” he continued. “And that's the biggest thing is our culture is set. Where our kids are right now is very healthy. They're working their butts off. We know what it takes, and that's one thing that they're going to hear over and over again. It takes what it takes. It takes us doing the small things right in the classroom. It takes us getting here early in the morning and doing weights. It takes us making sure that grades are not an issue.”
Aguirre has not yet named a replacement for himself as defensive coordinator but stressed the strength of “the room” – shorthand for the entire Gatesville football coaching staff that has had very little turnover in three seasons.
“After 19 years, you just know that, okay, the most tumultuous time on the staff is that there's a change at the head coaching position because you're not sure what's next,” he said. “The biggest thing is when I look at a coach, I ask myself, do I want my sons playing for that person? And there's not a person in our office that I would say no to.”
In the midst of changes that were 19 years coming, Aguirre knows that the same things are true today for himself and his family as they were his first day as a coach at Salado Junior High.
“We want to be faithful people, we want what's best for the community, and we want what's best for kids,” he said.
