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Brian Paschal was serving as the athletics director for Tyrrell County Schools when he heard about the head football coaching opening that was at Washington High School. He decided now was a good time to give it another go there.

Dr. Michael Swinson, the principal at Washington High School, liked what he heard and saw from Paschal about his vision for the football program. Out of the large number of candidates who applied, he felt Paschal was the right man for the job.

Paschal will replace Matt Taylor, who resigned to take a teaching position back at D.H. Conley High School in Winterville, where he lives. It was the school where he was an assistant football coach before coming to Washington in 2023. He will also be an assistant there.

“Coach Taylor did a fantastic job with us the last couple of years,” Swinson said. “We want to keep that culture going and turn some of those almost wins from last year into some wins this next year. Coach Taylor was right there.

“When you look at Coach Paschal, out of all of them, it was a tough decision, but out of all of them, he made it a little easier for us because he has a great vision for the future of Washington football. He laid out everything that he was going to do when he came in, start to finish, in detail. There was no vagueness to it whatsoever.”

Paschal will be making his third stop at Washington. He served as an assistant football coach in 1987 after graduating from Wake Forest University, where he was an offensive lineman. He was also the head football coach for the Pam Pack from 1996-2002.

“I have loved Columbia, but it’s an athletic director, and an athletic director for the county or for the high school and middle school, which is essentially the county,” Paschal said. “And there are wonderful people down there, but it’s not my wheelhouse.

“It was always football. So the opportunity back at Washington was real, and I feel like things are in place there, both administratively and facility to really have a good program. Now, you’ve got to go in there and you’ve got to bring people in. You’ve got to develop kids, but I feel like the pieces are in place at that school to really be good.”

Paschal has had success everywhere he’s been, and he’s been coaching for a long time. That includes stops as a coach at Chocowinity, C.B. Aycock, Roanoke, D.H. Conley, Bear Grass Charter, Riverside and Martin County. Chocowinity later merged with Aurora to form Southside. Roanoke later became South Creek and eventually merged with Riverside to form Martin County.

He began the Bear Grass Charter program, which achieved success quickly and led Martin County to an 11-2 season before he decided to retire from teaching.

He will be coaching weightlifting at Washington along with the football coaching duties. He and Swinson will also be working together in several other areas, including hiring assistant coaches/teachers. Paschal mentioned having a lot of interest in having someone like former Chocowinity and Southside coach DeWayne Kellum to help with the program.

There have been two instances where teams he coached had to forfeit wins due to academics, including 2001 at Washington, where the Pam Pack were 11-0, and 2015 at D.H. Conley. Outside of those learning experiences, the overall work he’s done and the athletes he’s coached and taught are hard to miss. That includes Terrance Copper, who played in the NFL and is regarded as one of the greats to play at Washington. Many others may not have pursued football after high school but will tell you how much Paschal has helped them along the way.

“He’s a great communicator,” Swinson said. “If you’ve ever talked with him before, ever had a conversation with him, he can remember football games, my goodness, from 20 years ago, specific details on them. He can tell you ins and outs of X’s and O’s.

“So that was really what put him over the edge of all of them was just his communication skills and his knowledge of the game.”

Paschal recalled a time when his wife, Serena, helped him at Bear Grass Charter during the COVID era when coaches became sick or could no longer assist. He said he has a deep interest in the Pam Pack and its history and recalled stories of legendary coach J.G. “Choppy” Wagner, who the football stadium is named for. He even pointed to his connections with some of the former football coaches at Washington (Phil Harris, Sport Sawyer, Jon Blank and Taylor), with each of them serving as an assistant coach at one time.

So, the love of football runs in the family, and he wants to share that with as many as he can at Washington.

“You’re a football coach first or you’re not, or it’s just not going to work,” Paschal said. “So I’m all in with this and that requires weight lifting, summer work, all the things that it requires you to do during the course of a day and week and season.

“The thing about football and coaching football is there are four seasons in the year and you’ve got to win every one of those seasons. And so you can’t do that being a part-timer. You can’t do that being somebody who’s not committed to it on a full-time basis.

“So the kids have to see that and you have to live that to get it done if you want to win.”