North Gaston High School has hired a very experienced assistant coach to take over its football program. Darrel Wilson was named head coach on Monday. This upcoming season, while his first as a head coach, will be his 25th year coaching high school football.

Wilson is a name that Gaston County football fans know very well. He is a 1995 graduate of Hunter Huss High School in Gastonia. There, he was a standout linebacker who made all-conference three times, All Gaston Gazette three times, was named Conference Player of the Year in 1994, and played in the East-West All-Star Game in 1995. Wilson went on to attend Appalachian State University on a full scholarship. He helped the Mountaineers win a conference championship in 1995.

Hunter Huss brought Wilson on as an assistant in 1999. That was the first of his 24 seasons as an assistant football coach. He joined Bessemer City High School’s staff from 2001-2004 and then returned to Huss, where he stayed through 2013. After one year coaching at Forestview High, Wilson became the defensive coordinator at Kings Mountain under Greg Lloyd in 2014. When Lloyd resigned from Kings Mountain last offseason, Wilson tried for the the Kings Mountain job and then became the defensive coordinator at Crest High School when Kings Mountain hired Strait Herron.

Previous North Gaston head coach Daniel Rothwell II and family moved to Richmond Hill, GA, where he will be the linebackers coach at a new school. He took over the Wildcats’ program in 2022. They finished with an 0-10 overall record in Rothwell’s first year. They had not won more than two games since the 2015 season. But, in 2023, North Gaston was one of North Carolina’s most improved teams as the Wildcats finished with a 5-6 record and made the N.C. High School Athletic Association’s 3A West playoffs. In the first round, they fell on the road at A.C. Reynolds High.

While North Gaston hasn’t finished with a winning record of late, the Wildcats did make a run to the 2007 3A state championship game, where they lost to Western Alamance in a shootout.

Wilson has been married to his wife Lavinia for 20 years and they have three beautiful children in Saniya, Darrius, and Darrion.

Source: highschoolot.com