One last time putting on the coach’s hat. One last time stepping onto the field; one last time being a part of a lasting legacy. After 18 seasons as the Head Coach of Grandview’s soccer team, Coach Brian Wood is retiring at the end of the 2024-25 season. 

Coach Wood’s coaching journey started in college- at Colorado State University.

“I was a captain and people said ‘You should get into coaching,’ and so I did,” Brian Wood said.

When Wood started coaching, the program was different; and adapting to the changes was a challenge.

“When I first started, we’d never played in stadiums; we always played at high schools and now that teams play at stadiums most of the time, it’s a big change,” Wood said. “Also, this power shift in the state, like where the strongest schools and teams are, has changed a lot over time; and it sometimes feels like players don’t commit as much as they used to.”

As Coach Wood ends his career as Grandview’s head coach he looks back at his favorite memories from coaching both the girls and boys.

“My favorite win with the boys was beating Boulder in the 2018 semifinals,” Wood said. “It was a team we had struggled to beat.”

Wood also has a fond victory from coaching the girls in the return from COVID.

“We didn’t make the playoffs and then the next year we come back and won state. That was pretty gratifying to do,” Wood said.

An accomplishment that Wood holds close to his heart is the Unified Camp and its support.

“Our unified camp every year- that’s always a special thing to me.  Probably our very first one we did was my favorite one, just because we had actual Rapids professional players come. The Rapids coach came and participated in it.  Probably one of the neatest things we’ve done the whole time.  I’ve been here,” said Wood.

Through the ups and downs in his soccer-coach career, Wood has learned to improve as a coach by learning how to mold great players into a great team. 

“I’ve learned that when you work hard, you get results. It just doesn’t come naturally. Just because you have good players doesn’t necessarily mean you’re gonna be successful. You gotta figure out how to make a team work together,” Wood said.

Coach Wood’s lesson about building a cohesive team has left a mark on his players.

“He has to develop a team environment really quickly, so being a good teammate is such a big thing for him,” Gabby Hanson (12) said.

Besides regular practice and hard work for players physically, Wood also believes in getting to know his players mentally.

“Getting to know players is probably more important than anything else,” Wood said. “Understanding how they work and the things they like, and the things they wanna do and their goals and what they really want to focus on.”

The ability to know when to push a player and when not to has been a lesson to Coach Wood throughout his career.

“I have to give a little and sometimes giving a little actually means a lot to a player. You can get a lot more out of them,” Wood said.

Before Grandview, Coach Wood coached at Overland and saw his ability to ‘give a little’ to encourage a team.

“Things just weren’t going our way, but we kind of hung in there,” Wood said. “We were at practice one day and things weren’t going well.  They were frustrated.  I was frustrated. I said, let’s just have a seat and we sat down in a circle and just talked for an hour and a half and it just completely changed our season.”

The difficulties of coaching are even deeper than what team you are given. The challenging part of coaching for Wood was tryouts.

“Telling players that they didn’t make a team, telling players they’re gonna have to be cut from the program because we don’t have a spot for them on the team, telling a player they’ve worked and they’ve come out and they’ve tried out and done these things and they didn’t reach their goals.  That’s the hardest thing that I’ve had to do as a coach,” Wood said. 

Even though breaking sensitive news was hard for Coach Wood, keeping up team spirit after tough losses was an added complication.

“It’s not easy because the coaches are usually depressed and mad too, but usually [we] go home, think about it, and then kind of forget about it. Let’s come out and just start working on what we didn’t do well on and really focus on that next game.”

Going into these finals seasons Wood is looking forward to being in the moment.

“I want these to be seasons I remember and look back on and go, ‘Yeah, that was fun and I miss it’,” Wood said.

After 18 years of coaching at Grandview Wood is leaving behind an impact on his players.

“He’s impacted [the program] soccer wise but he’s also created an environment between us as teammates as well that has helped me with academic school stuff,” Hanson said.

His commitment to the program was built from love according to his players.

“You can’t do the same thing every year. You got to try different things. Different teams have different needs, but I like the challenge of it,” Wood said. “I like being out in the stadium at night- under the lights and watching them play. I love watching teams do the things that you’ve worked on in training and become more successful and develop over a season.”

Wood hopes that his team is filled with the same love and passion for soccer as he does. 

“I hope that I created an environment that they enjoyed. That they like playing, like showing up every day and playing.” Wood said. “I hope they continue their development as players and hope that they keep playing beyond here- that this isn’t the end of their career.”

Once he steps down, Coach Wood will have left behind memories for his players.

“He was just so nice and he would dance. I mean he came into the locker room dancing. He’s had such a positive impact on this program,” Hanson said. “He is just like a dad. He is so nice all the time.”