Longtime Yorktown High School football scorekeeper Bob Herring did some digging and fact-checking.
What did he find? With veteran Stone Bridge Bulldogs’ head football coach Mickey Thompson announcing his retirement in recent days, the Yorktown Patriots’ Bruce Hanson is now the winningest active public high-school football coach in Northern Virginia, and possibly the state
Thompson retired with 336 career wins after coaching the Loudoun County team since the school’s opening in 2000 and Park View High in Sterling the 10 seasons before that. Hanson will start the 2024 campaign this fall with 296 career victories.
Longtime Hampton Crabbers head coach Mike Smith, also retired, is listed as the Virginia High School League’s all-time leader in victories with 506. Including Thompson, that VHSL list has at least six other coaches with more than 300 victories, but none are active.
So if that VHSL list is accurate and updated, Hanson is the state’s leader in career wins, as well as in Northern Virginia, for action coaches.
Of his triumphs, 266 are with Arlington’s Yorktown and 30 with the Wakefield Warriors, also of Arlington, where he began his head coaching career and was in charge for six seasons, starting in 1974.
Hanson started coaching Yorktown in 1985. The coach anticipates winning his 300th game this coming season. Yorktown won seven games last fall and made the semifinals of the region playoffs.
“I didn’t know I had 296 wins,” Hanson said. “That’s exciting. I can’t catch Mike Smith, but I’d like to keep coaching long enough to get over 300 wins and a bunch more.”
NOTE: Stone Bridge and Yorktown met only once with Thompson and Hanson at the helms, with the Bulldogs winning, 69-50, in a 2012 region-championship game.
