Hoover head coach Chip English during a game between Hoover High School and Spain Park on Friday, August 29, 2025, at Spain Park High School in Hoover, AL. Photo by Barry Stephenson
July 22 marks 29 days until the official start of the high school football season, with the AHSAA allowing the first competitions to be played Thursday, Aug. 20.
Hoover will open the season in 30 days, as the Bucs take on Muscle Shoals in the season opener Friday, Aug. 21.
As kickoff approaches over the next several weeks, Hoover Sun and Under the Lights will count down the days until the opening kick.
Chip English enters his third season as the Hoover football coach this fall, looking to put forth another winning season and a playoff run. He arrived at Hoover in 2023 and spent his first season as the quarterbacks coach.
English provided stability in an interim role for the 2024 season, as the Bucs won the Class 7A, Reigon 3 title and made a run to the state semifinals, finishing with a 10-3 record.
Last fall, Hoover went 6-5 overall and fell in the opening round of the playoffs.
English's career record is 34-51 across four schools, but his first three head coaching jobs featured him taking over moribund programs.
English arrived at Hoover ahead of the 2023 season after serving as the Albertville High head coach for two years. Taking over an Albertville program that has won just two playoff games in the last 30 years, the Aggies had a combined 2-18 record over his two years there. However, Albertville has won just one game over the last three seasons since his departure.
Prior to Albertville, English served as the head coach at Grissom for four years. Grissom is another program that has fallen on hard times in recent seasons. The Tigers went 16-25 over his four years there, going 6-5 in 2020 and making the program's only other playoff appearance since 2004.
Coaching at Grissom was English's introduction to Alabama. English's first coaching stops were in North Carolina, first at A.L. Brown High School in Kannapolis as an assistant, and as the head coach at West Caldwell High School for three years. He turned around the West Caldwell program as well, taking over a team that had won one total game in the three years before he got there. By his third year at West Caldwell, English led the program to a 10-win season in 2016 before accepting the Grissom job.
