Azle’s new head coach for soccer girls is a familiar face

Hannah Smith, the assistant coach on the Azle High School girls soccer team for the past two years, has been promoted to head coach.

She replaces former head coach Madeline Wood, who moved to Oklahoma over the summer.

“I'm happy to stay here with the kids and just transition to that spot and get going,” she said.

Azle was Smith’s first coaching job after leaving college in 2019, and she is in her third year at Hornet Nation.

Smith grew up and graduated from high school in Garland in 2013 before playing Division II soccer at Fort Hays State in Hays, Kansas.

In 2017, she graduated from Hays State and became a volunteer assistant coach at Texas A&M University-Corpus Christi while working on a master’s degree. In 2019, she earned a master’s degree and began working at Azle High.

The Lady Hornets finished out of the playoffs last season with an overall record of 3-18-2 and a district record of 1-8-1. The team consisted of sophomores mostly, and their inexperience showed. Last year’s roster contained just one senior.

This season, the roster will be packed with five seniors and eight juniors with varsity experience.

“We're gaining a lot more experience than we've had in the last two years,” Smith said. “We've had a very young team up until this point.”

Also, local girls are starting to play soccer earlier in middle school and coming to high school with more experience, she said.

“We’ve just got to put it all together and hope for some results,” she said.

Making the playoffs is a goal but not the only one.

“The biggest thing I want to do is sit down and make goals as a team to kind of know what we're shooting for throughout our district and throughout the season,” Smith said. “The playoffs are always going to be our end goal. Whether we can get there this year, we have the players to do it. I guess we'll just have to wait and see how it all comes together.”

Jelling as a team will lead to more wins, she said.

“The biggest thing is team, the team atmosphere,” Smith said. “I don't want to make goals that I've written out myself because that's something we have to do as a group for them to buy into it. As long as we stay a team and continue to fight as a team, that's the biggest thing. Being sure we're playing for each other instead of someone just playing for themselves.”