Sean Hayden named Eudora’s head football coach

When Sean Hayden heard Eudora High was looking for a new football coach, he quickly realized it checked off all of the boxes he wanted: a small-town environment with some tradition in the program.

After spending the last four seasons as a defensive coordinator at Augusta, Hayden was named Eudora’s newest football coach earlier this month. He met high school and middle school players on Jan. 19 and plans to return for another visit next week.

Hayden replaces Phil Katzenmeier, who was Eudora’s head coach for three seasons and finished with a 12-18 record and a Class 4A-I state semifinal appearance in 2015.

“Being in a one high school town, being in a community like that, is important to me and my family,” Hayden said Wednesday afternoon. “I grew up in small-town southwest Kansas and being in Augusta, I knew I couldn’t live in a city. I knew my next place had to be something similar to the set up I have in Augusta.”

Hayden attended South Gray in Montezuma (population: 966), about 30 minutes outside of Dodge City, and played college football at Dodge City Community College.

Augusta had five senior starters on defense last year and Hayden wanted to see that class all of the way through because they had started on varsity since their sophomore years. The Orioles allowed an average of 21 points per game on their way to a 5-4 record.

Taking over as a head coach, Hayden wants to implement a simplified defense with a goal to play as fast and mistake-free as possible. Augusta won a combined four games from 2010-13 before winning at least five games in each of the last four years.

“If you look at how we did the last few years,” Hayden said, “we didn’t match up that well athletically sometimes with teams we played like Buhler, McPherson and Maize South, but we were a tough team because our kids played hard every snap.”

Hayden said before he even applied for the job, he watched some film of Eudora from last season. One of the first things that stood out was, “Man, they’ve got some tough kids,” he said.

When he met with some of his future players, he was impressed by how strong they looked, crediting Katzenmeier and their weight lifting program. At the meeting, he emphasized that he’s more than happy to coach kids brand new to the sport and that players will have a lot of control within their offensive and defensive schemes.

“I let them know at Augusta, we had two, three, four kids who didn’t go out until their senior year and they ended up being all-league kids because we’re going to coach ’em all up no matter what, whether they’ve been out or not,” Hayden said. “I think they were excited about that.”

Once Hayden started coaching, he said it was a “dream” to become a head coach one day, but he wanted to wait for the right time. Letting it settle in for the last few weeks, he believes Eudora is the perfect fit.

“I knew right away, they’ve won some football games, they’ve been successful,” Hayden said. “It’s exactly, exactly where I want to be.”