Highland Park High School has one of the most well-known high school football programs in the Dallas area and the state of Texas, winning six total state championships and producing many talented players behind one of the winningest coaches in state history.
Randy Allen, the coach with the second most wins in Texas at 439, played football and baseball at SMU in the late 1960s and early 1970s but knew he wanted to be a coach when he was 12.
“I could just see the impact the great Tom Landry and all those coaches had,” Allen told The Dallas Express in an interview. “I just knew that I could combine two things that I loved to do and had a passion for, and that was competitive athletics and my faith in Christ. I never doubted [that] what I wanted to do is be a head football coach.”
While Allen played for many great coaches in his career, including College Football Hall of Fame Hayden Fry, it was his high school coach Merrill Green who really influenced his coaching style.
“I’ve always wanted to be a high school coach and not a college coach,” Allen explained. “Coach Green was a great man. He was tough, and he was a good football coach and a good football player. He demanded a lot of us, but we won big.”
After he graduated from SMU, Allen started working under Green in Bryan, Texas.
“He called me and said, ‘Have you found a job yet?’ I said, ‘No, sir,’ and he said, ‘Well, my baseball coach and assistant varsity football coach just resigned. I’d like you to drive to Bryan for an interview,” Allen recounted. “I had never been to Bryan. I drove to Bryan, Coach Green hired me, and I was a varsity [football] assistant and the head baseball coach.”
Allen spent eight years at Bryan before taking the head coaching job at Ballinger High School, which he led to a 44-15-2 mark. From there, he went on to Brownwood and eventually returned to Cooper, aiming for the one thing he never accomplished as a player: winning a state championship.
“We got beat in the state championship game [when I was playing], so my desire was to go back to Cooper and win a state championship,” Allen said. “That was the motivation I had. I wanted to be like Coach Green.”
As a coach, Allen’s Cooper team made the state championship game in 1996 for just the second time in program history, but two years later, he decided to make a change and leave his alma mater.
“We went to the state championship game in ’96,” he explained. “I had a really good football team and a great running back, Dominic Rhodes, and we got beat by [Austin] Westlake and Drew Brees in the state championship game. Then, there was a boundary change, and a lot of the Abilene Cooper neighborhoods went to Abilene High.”
The boundary change led Allen to search for a coaching job elsewhere, and he landed in Highland Park.
“I just wanted to go to a community where the boundaries were consistent, where football was important, and where people appreciated football,” he told The Dallas Express. “I interviewed at Highland Park and was fortunate enough to be hired as the head football coach and athletic director.”
Allen became Highland Park’s head coach in 1999, taking over the then-4A program from Scott Smith, who also coached in college as an assistant and was most recently the head coach at Legacy Christian Academy in Frisco.
During his tenure, Allen has led the Scots to four of their six state titles and their first-ever undefeated season in 2005, beating Marshall 59-0 in the state title game.
“Matthew Stafford was a big name, but boy, that was a great class,” Allen recalled. “Everybody expected them to win the state championship as they were growing up. … I just remember a great team, great players, fun, big wins, coming from behind, and some really close games to win.”
Highland Park moved up from 4A to 5A in 2016 and moved to 6A before last season, but that has not slowed down the program. Allen has guided the team and helped it adjust.
“The competition is tougher all the way around,” he noted. “More depth, bigger kids, tougher games, more competition. When you have more students and more boys to choose from in your school, you’re going to have a more competitive team. It’s been really competitive, and our district this year is very competitive — a lot of parity in our district.”
After a brief retirement in 2018, Allen returned to the sideline for the Scots and is closing in on the state’s all-time wins record. He said he felt he wasn’t quite finished and returned after seeking the advice of family members and mentors.
“I went to see my dad, and my sister-in-law said, ‘Man, you look sad, what’s wrong with you?’ and then another lady said, ‘How does it feel not to have a purpose anymore?'” Allen told The Dallas Express. “Those two things really stuck in my craw. and then another guy asked me, ‘Are you satisfied you’ve called your last play?’ And I said no.”
Two weeks later, he asked the district if he could return.
“Now that I’m back, I’ve never doubted that I made the right decision,” Allen added. “I’m just so fortunate that I came back here and, you know, I just, it’s my passion. It’s what I love doing. My wife is a great coach’s wife. She loves it that I’m coaching. So, I’ve got great kids, great coaching staff, and I got a lot of support.”
One of Allen’s most prominent supporters has been his father.
“When I go out and coach, I realize that he’s watching at home on the screens, and it’s something every day, every week, he looks forward to,” he told The Dallas Express. “It’s [a] big motivation for me to know my dad is enjoying it.”
“My dad’s had the most influence [on me],” he shared. “He was my first coach in Little League. I had a ball in my hand from the time I can remember, and it’s because my dad was a really good player, and he wanted me to be a good player.”
Allen has coached his share of good players in his post-playing career and wants to leave a lasting impact on them as they come through the program, and he continues his success on the field.
“I want my legacy to be the players that played for me, enjoyed playing football, and developed character and had a chance to develop their faith with me,” he told The Dallas Express. “That I had [the] integrity that they could look up to, and that I was a good role model for them.”
“We had fun together,” he continued. “Fun, a lot of times, is winning, but there are a lot of things that go into sacrificing and hard work, and all those things go into competition and make it fun.”
Highland Park (4-1, 2-1 District 7-6A) hosts district leader Richardson Berkner (4-2, 4-0) at 7 p.m. on Friday at Highlander Stadium.
