Woodland head girls basketball coach Glen Flanagan, center, talks to his team Tuesday, Jan. 14, 2025, during Woodland's 42-41 loss to Columbia RIver at Woodland High School. (Taylor Balkom/The Columbian)
WOODLAND — Glen Flanagan already has a blueprint ready for practice when the time comes his Woodland Beavers football team’s postseason run overlaps with the start of winter’s girls basketball season.
“We’ll either have basketball go early,” Flanagan began explaining at length, “or I’ll go out (to football) right away and get our defense out of the way and have good coaches that will have the offense. Then come back in for basketball, and then have a good JV coach so they’ll be running it and balancing it.
“It’s important to surround yourself with really good assistants.”
If it reads like Flanagan, a longtime coaching fixture at his high school alma mater, is a busy bee, it’s because he is.
Three-sport high school athletes are a speciality, but Flanagan is a rarity among coaches. He’s believed to be only one of two coaches statewide (1B Selkirk’s Kelly Cain) who are their school’s head football coach and head coach of either boys or girls basketball. That’s on top of Flanagan also being an assistant track and field coach at Woodland in the spring.
A dual-sport head coach overseeing two major team sports — in back-to-back seasons on the high school calendar, no less — is a tall order, yet Flanagan is going a step further. He could win league titles in both sports months apart.
At age 53, Flanagan is a self-described “old-school coach.” He continues to work 12-hour days throughout the school year and jokes he only knows what 4-6 p.m. looks like once summer hits. It’s the same pace today as in 1995 when he kicked off his coaching career as Woodland’s defensive coordinator in football and an assistant girls basketball coach, plus coaching middle school track and field.
Thirty years later, he’s still defensive coordinator on top of head-coaching duties, is approaching 450 career wins in girls basketball and now coaches high school track and field. He coached all three of his children — daughters Jessica and McKenna, and son, Tyler — who all graduated from Woodland, and has zero plans to slow down.
“The reason I’ve survived is because I love this town,” Flanagan said. “I believe in having a purpose-filled life. I believe I love sports for a reason and I really love working with kids for a reason.”
Football coach
When Woodland’s football job came open last spring, Flanagan realized all signs pointed at him to become its next head coach. He and his wife, Jody, were on the same page too.
“We live it and breathe it every day,” she said.
The 2024 football season didn’t come without early learning curves. Losses to 1A Kalama and La Center pinned the Beavers at 0-2 to begin September, and Flanagan chose not to leave his house the entire weekend after Woodland’s second defeat.
The book “Extreme Ownership: How U.S. Navy SEALs Lead and Win,” which is built around a core principle that leaders take responsibility for everything in their sphere of influence, resonates with Flanagan.
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“Everything is on me,” he said, “and if it’s all on me, it’s almost liberating. … If I wasn’t taking complete extreme ownership over everything, it would’ve been really hard.
“It forces you to work harder and forces you to get after it. And then we started winning.”
And winning, the Beavers did.
A 12-0 victory over Washougal to open league play began a seven-game winning streak to repeat as 2A GSHL champions. The program last won consecutive league titles in 2006 and 2007. Emotions hit Flanagan after his first head-coaching win and in the regular-season finale versus Ridgefield.
Senior point guard and four-year varsity basketball player Addi Stading grew up playing in Woodland’s youth program. At one point during the football team’s 0-2 stretch, she echoed the same encouragement to Flanagan that he’s known for throughout his years coaching girls basketball. The coach is known for something else, too, Stading said, regardless of what sport he’s coaching.
“He’s always super supportive,” she said, “and what you put into his program, the time that you come in and show up, he’s going to help you. He’s going to be there for you no matter what — on and off the court.”
Doing it all
Being a multi-sport head coach isn’t rare. Coaches such as Washougal’s Dave Hajek (football, track and field) and Union’s Gary Mills (boys and girls golf, girls basketball) have been head-coaching regulars at the programs for years.
However, the demands and responsibilities leading football and basketball programs have area coaches impressed by what Flanagan is doing.
Andrew Johnson, a three-sport coach himself as Kelso’s head girls basketball coach and assistant in football plus Castle Rock’s head track coach, is one of them. Johnson coached opposite of Flanagan from 2016-19 as Woodland’s boys basketball coach, and lists numerous reasons why Flanagan is the perfect coach to juggle the commitments.
“I don’t know anybody else that can do it,” Johnson said. “It is unbelievable. … The fact that he’s doing it at his hometown, and done it at a high level every single year.
“What he does for the school and the community is unprecedented by anybody else.”
In Year 28, Flanagan is Southwest Washington’s dean of girls basketball coaches. His first season in 1997-98, Woodland went 22-5 and placed seventh at state. From 2001-06, the program made six consecutive state tournament appearances, won or shared five league titles and earned four trophies.
Woodland’s last league title came in 2013-14 when its only loss in a 22-1 season came at regionals.
Stading, the point guard, said what makes this year’s team special happen to also be qualities Flanagan has seen in several prior teams: talent surrounded by chemistry.
“We all love each other,” Stading said, “… we celebrate each other’s wins.”
Those celebrations extend to the locker room, too. For years, coaches and players douse one another with a water-bottle shower after each win, home or away. That’s because Flanagan wants to make sure players cherish the small things throughout a season-long journey.
“We celebrate every victory like it’s the state championship, because why not?” the coach said. “We celebrate because you need to do that. In this society, we’re so ready to focus on the negative and so ready to focus on how bad it is and all the bad things. So let’s choose to focus on the positive.”
It’s all part of Flanagan’s latest journey in his long-tenure as a high school coach: a first-year head football and a veteran head basketball coach. And a shot of winning two league titles three months apart.
Said Flanagan: “I’m busy, but I’m not busy alone.”
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