With longtime Yorktown High School head football coach Bruce Hanson having retired in recent days, Josh Shapiro has moved up to No. 1 on a seniority list.
Shapiro, who has been head coach of the Washington-Liberty Generals for 18 seasons, is now the longest-tenured head coach, by far, of the same team in the 6D North Region.
Shapiro became the W-L head coach in 2007, moving up from an assistant position. His teams have since won 88 games, three district championships and have reached the region playoffs nine times.
Shapiro has often said, and not jokingly, that he thought Hanson would outlast him by many years. He did not want Hanson to leave, because Shapiro has said he enjoyed the challenge of facing and trying to defeat Yorktown.
Hanson coached Yorktown for 40 years.
Hanson and Shapiro’s teams are Arlington County rivals that play every season, being in the same districts over the years. It just so happened the teams met twice this fall.
Washington-Liberty won each, first in the regular season and then in a first-round region-playoff game. That was the first time W-L has ever defeated Yorktown twice in one season.
Hanson said those losses bothered him, but that was not the reason he is stepping down. He had been considering retiring for the last couple of years, he told ARLnow.
Next in line after Shapiro as far as head-coaching seniority with the same team in the 6D North Region are Madison Warhawks’ head coach Justin Counts and Sean Curry of the Chantilly Chargers, at the helm eight seasons each.
Madison and Washington-Liberty, each undefeated at 12-0, will meet Saturday (Nov. 30) at 1 p.m. in the region-championship game. The winner advances to the Virginia High School League Class 6 state tournament.
Washington-Liberty is this season’s Liberty District champion; Madison is the Concorde District winner. The Generals are playing in the region final for the first time since 1975, when the school was known as Washington-Lee.
This season has been W-L’s most successful under Shapiro. Last fall’s nine wins by the Generals were the most in a season under Shapiro until this season.
