Eastside High School came highly recommended to Dan Morgan.
Morgan, who spent the past four seasons as the head football coach at Blythewood High School, has been hired to lead the program at Eastside.
Morgan replaces Steve Wilson, who led the Eagles to a 10-11 record over the past two seasons.
Morgan, 46, stepped down from Blythewood in December after leading the Bengals to a 29-20 record and four consecutive playoff berths. He's been at the school for nine years, the first five as defensive coordinator.
"There were only a handful of jobs that I was really, really interested in if I was going to continue being a head coach," Morgan said, "and then there were some other ones that I was real interested in being offensive coordinator or just an assistant coach.
"When this one opened, it changed the way I was looking at my field of schools. It was one of those things where I had so many coaching buddies who called me and told me that I really need to look into Eastside. I said, 'Well, OK.' I started doing my research, and the more I researched the school, the more I liked it."
Morgan, a Rock Hill native and graduate of Northwestern High School, was at Eastside on Monday.
"Everybody's been very welcoming," he said. "I've gotten to know some of the kids today. We had a team meeting, and it was good to see the kids. We're going to have to get more and more kids out for football and get the numbers up a little bit."
Morgan began his high school football coaching career at Waccamaw in Pawleys Island. After three years there, he coached at his alma mater, Northwestern, for three years and then spent five years at West-Oak before moving to Blythewood.
"They're competitive at all other sports," Morgan said. "I think we can get them over the hump and hopefully be even more competitive than they already are at football. They've had five wins each year these past two years, which is a huge turnaround from where they were.
"They've built a great foundation. I think if we can get the right staff in place and get these kids buying in to what we want to do, then hopefully we can get to the next step. This school has great resources with a wonderful faculty and an incredible administration that's been so supportive."
