 For 42 years, Philip Haywood has been a name known to many across the football scene and as Belfry's head football coach, he was honored once again on a national scale. Last year, he picked up two honors of two separate Hall of Fame and was named USA Today's National Coach of the Year. This time around, he heard his name called as the NHSACA National Coach of the Year. Philip Haywood is the state's all-time winningest coach with a career record of 417 wins and just 129 losses in 42 years of coaching. Most recently, Haywood led the Belfry Pirates to four consecutive Class 3A state championships and has led the Pirates to six state championships and 12 state championship appearances. I spoke with Coach Haywood earlier today about this grand honor. You know, surprise and please at the same time. And I mean, but it is a great honor and not just for me, but I think for our entire coaching staff and our school and our players, all those guys that have played in the past have kind of been a part of this. So it's not just for me, but I think it's for everybody that's been a part of our program over all these years that have helped me get to this point in my career. Now, you know, any time that you get a national award, that makes it pretty special when you're running against people from coaches from all over the nation. That does make it special. And you know, you don't think about those things when you're going through a season, I'm sure in two, three weeks or four weeks, whenever we get started, we won't be thinking about it then. But at that particular moment, you can't realize, hey, you know, this is every state in the United States that nominated people and made people have these outstanding career records and state championships and all these things they've done. You can't realize here, it's pretty elite company. And so that makes it pretty special because of the national award, they don't come easy.