Phil Danaher doesn’t remember who said it, but it was one of the first lessons he learned as a young coach: write down your goals. You may not look at them every day, but writing them down helps you carry them around in your mind.
So, more than 40 years ago, he scratched a few dreams down on a sheet of spiral notebook paper. Be a good husband and father. See his kids get college scholarships. Become a head coach by his mid-twenties and move up to a big school in his mid-thirties. One goal, however, was so audacious that it never crossed his mind to include it: win more football games than any Texas high school coach in history.
Danaher has now done just that. On Thursday, his Corpus Christi Calallen High School Wildcats defeated the Corpus Christi Flour Bluff Hornets, 31-7. It was the 427th victory of Danaher’s 43-year career, pushing him just past coach G.A. Moore, who won 426 games with Celina and Pilot Point high schools.