Loren Montgomery | Head Coach, Bixby High School (Bixby, OK)
One of the greatest coaches in Oklahoma high school football history discusses how he's sustained a dynasty and why high school football is unique.
Loren Montgomery grew up in Sand Springs, Oklahoma, where he played under Hall of Fame coach L.D. Bains at Charles Page High School. He went on to start on the offensive line at Northeastern State University in Tahlequah, where he was eventually inducted into the NSU hall of fame. After college, he spent a decade as an assistant at Jenks under legendary coach Allan Trimble, eventually rising to offensive coordinator. In 2010, Montgomery took over at Bixby and has built one of the most dominant dynasties in Oklahoma high school football history. Entering his 16th season, he has led the Spartans to 11 straight championship appearances and 10 state titles. In this conversation, Montgomery talks about the origins of the Bixby dynasty, why he’s never left for college jobs, and what he still hopes his players carry with them long after they’re done playing.
Take me through your early years growing up and playing football in Oklahoma — what the game meant to you, what it was like playing for a really successful high school program.
I started playing in 6th grade. I had played baseball up until that point, and then a lot of my friends were doing football — practicing in the yard, all that. The Salvation Army in Sand Springs had a league, probably eight teams in each grade, around the West Tulsa area. I was fortunate enough to play for some really good coaches. None of them had kids on the team, so they were just volunteers. They made it fun, and I fell in love with the sport.
I played through high school as an offensive and defensive lineman. Played for a Hall of Fame coach in Sand Springs — he’s passed away now, but he was an excellent teacher, excellent coach, great human being. Then I got a scholarship to Northeastern State in Tahlequah. Same kind of deal — really good coach. I thought I was going to redshirt, but ended up starting halfway through my freshman year. Played for a Hall of Fame coach there who had won a national championship in NAIA. We were moving from NAIA to D2, and our senior year we snuck into the playoffs and made a run all the way to the semifinals. When you’re a D2 guy and four people are sharing a hotel room, and then you get to the NCAA playoffs and they fly you in two to a room and give you a meal allowance — that was pretty cool.
After that, I knew I wasn’t quite ready to hang it up. My roommate’s dad was a coach in the Oklahoma City area, and I was visiting with him. My scholarship was done and I knew I was going to be living at home in the Tulsa area, so I reached out to Allan Trimble — longtime head coach at Jenks, all everything. He’s since passed away from ALS, but I worked for him for ten years. He gave me as much work as I wanted. The more you were willing to bite off, the more he’d give you. He taught me what a successful program in the Tulsa area should look like — year-round training, organized practices, all of it. He was one of the pioneers of getting year-round football going.
I interned the first year, then got hired as the O-line coach. After four or five years, I was offensive coordinator and running the strength program. I had the perfect job. I was never going to leave.
Then in 2009, I was interim head coach for a few games. And I’d always run my mouth about this little 5A school in a small, growing suburban area outside Tulsa — Bixby. We played them when I was at Jenks, and I said, man, that community has all the makings of a really good football program.
Sure enough, right after that season, the Bixby job came open. I’d never applied for a job before. Decided to throw my name in the hat and was fortunate enough to get it.
Did you always know you wanted to coach, or was it something that crept up on you near the end of your playing career?
No. I had no idea, really. I went to college and once I got the basics out of the way, I entertained the thought of maybe doing a business degree or going into education. As I got closer, I decided to major in special ed — I knew I’d be able to get a job easily. And then after that, I decided, you know what, I’m going to give coaching a try too. So no, I didn’t always know I was going to be a coach.
You were inducted into the Hall of Fame at Northeastern State. What did that mean to you?
It was cool. They probably didn’t watch a ton of my game film, because I was really, really average — or below average. I was just good enough. But NSU holds a special place in my heart. A lot of my really good friends to this day, we still get together — next week on the Fourth of July, 55 of us and our families get together at the lake. I got to play for great people, the town is unique, you kind of have to be going there to even know where Tahlequah is. It just meant a lot.
When you were at Jenks, you looked at Bixby and felt like it had all the makings of a really good program. What were some of the things you saw in that community?
They were always pretty good at football. It’s an upper-middle-class community, so I knew we’d be able to raise money and have the resources we needed. And there are a lot of tall people. I know that sounds crazy, but a lot of tall people. I think success and height might go hand in hand sometimes.
Coach McGrew, the head coach before me, was awesome to me when I got there. He told me, all the things you have to do to be successful in 6A — a larger staff, year-round programming — he’d decided he didn’t want to do that anymore. But he believed I could take the program to the next level. They’d played for some state championships but never won one. I thought, you know, if you brought in an excellent strength and conditioning program and a rigorous summer program, you could maybe take the thing somewhere.
You played for L.D. Bains, then coached under Allan Trimble — two Hall of Fame coaches. How did those experiences shape the way you built things at Bixby?
Anytime you’re going through a journey as a player and a coach, you’re always looking at things and thinking, man, this is really good, or, I wish we did this, or, if I were ever a coach I might do it this way. I had really good examples in Coach Bains, in Coach Eckert at Northeastern State, and then getting to see it all put together in Coach Trimble’s program at Jenks.
I also heard Rick Jones — a really good high school coach who was at Greenwood for years — speak one time. He said what’s successful at one place might not be successful at another. I think there’s a lot of truth in that. When you look at our program, you’ll see foundational things from all the places I’ve been, and then some things that are quite a bit different — our staff’s own twist.
What are some examples of things Bixby does that you’d consider unique?
Club 225 is one. Any time a kid does a full clean with 225 pounds for the first time, we celebrate it — t-shirt, sticker for their car, the whole thing. We call it Club 225. Our first year here, eight kids were in it. Last year we had somewhere in the nineties.
We also try to incentivize consistency. The kids with 100% summer attendance, no questions asked, I cook them a ribeye. We call them Steak Eaters. I used to do it at my house, but now we have so many it doesn’t fit anymore.
We run two JV games a week instead of one. On Monday nights, we split up and play two different games. We run three eighth grade schedules, three ninth grade schedules. We try to host everything — team camps, seven-on-sevens, all of it. Part of that is selfish — we want people to see our facilities and feel comfortable in them. But we also want to make sure our kids are getting reps.
The other thing we’ve really dialed in over the last few years is that we’re always competing. No matter what time of year it is, whether it’s the weight room or the field, we’re recording, measuring, ranking the kids, and posting the results. What gets measured changes intent.
This summer we do something called the Rack. The top six guys in our daily field measurements get to use the two racks in the middle with gold barbells. Each day we’ll measure two things out on the field — today it was a fly 10 and a double broad jump. At the end of the week, those top guys also go through a leadership vote from our leadership council and coaches. So it’s a combination of your output on the field and your core values. You can win everything out on the field, but if you don’t get any leadership votes, you’re not going to win the Rack. When kids can compete every single day and see the results, it drives intent just a little bit more.
What do you attribute the run at Bixby to? What are the real reasons you’ve been able to sustain this for over a decade?
Number one, we’ve been lucky and caught some breaks at the right time — like the 6A split. Before the split, a school like Broken Arrow had 6,000 kids and we had 1,200. When they created 6A-II right as we had some really good players coming through, that mattered.
We’ve also been able to retain the core of our coaches for a long time. Tyler Snyder, our offensive coordinator, will be going on his 16th year here. Rodney Flowers, our defensive coordinator, going on his 15th. Our head eighth and ninth grade coaches were here before I was. I’ve got a linebackers coach who was here a year before me that I actually played with in college. That continuity is huge.
The community is growing and athletics matter here. On Friday nights, the entire town of Bixby is at the football game. With so many large districts split up across multiple schools, you don’t always get that one-horse-town atmosphere. We have it.
And then there are just good football players here. There were good players here before I got here, and there are good players here now. Some of our former players have kids coming up through the system.
How do you combat entitlement or complacency when winning a state title is basically the expectation every year?
Honestly, it’s one of the things we’re dealing with right now. We graduated a really good group last year. A lot of these guys haven’t played much, and now it’s their turn. We’ve seen in team camp that some of them aren’t quite as competitive as they need to be. I wish I knew the magic formula, but I don’t.
What I keep coming back to is that healthy anxiety is a real thing. We hear anxiety talked about as something negative, but anxiety that causes you to focus, to have drive, to stay competitive — that’s a good thing. When your best players are your best leaders, then you’ve got something. But I don’t always know what resonates.
You’ve talked about process over outcome. How do you actually instill that — keeping guys locked in on a Monday in June instead of just waiting for Friday nights in the fall?
We’re always competing. That’s the biggest thing. No matter what time of year it is, we’re measuring, we’re ranking, we’re posting it. What gets measured changes intent.
Like I mentioned with the Rack — it’s June 22nd and our guys are competing today in a fly 10 and a double broad jump. The results go up. The leadership votes happen. There’s something on the line every single day, not just in October.
Your O-line background is pretty deep — played it, coached it, coordinated around it. How much does that shape how you run things now as a head coach?
Probably more than I realize — your own perception of yourself is always a little off. During practice I’m not calling plays, so I’m over with the offensive line assisting our O-line coach. I think Tyler Snyder knows way more football than I do at this point. But over the years I’ve been able to be a resource for him on blocking schemes and what I think we can get done.
And then there’s just the mentality of an offensive lineman. The emphasis we put on strength and conditioning — I never cancel those sessions. We lift five days a week during the season. That probably traces directly back to what allowed me to get on the field in the first place. That was my edge.
What do you look for when you’re hiring assistant coaches?
Guys that love football and work hard. If I need them up here seven days a week or call a Sunday meeting — which I try not to do, I try to protect their time in the offseason — I want guys that want to be here anyway. Work ethic is huge.
I look for guys who haven’t bounced around a lot. Job hoppers who are always chasing the next thing — that’s not what I want. I want coaches who want to develop, and if we can promote from within, we’re going to do that. We’ve had a pretty good track record of elevating middle school coaches to high school positions.
And you can’t have a staff of all the same guys. Each position group is different, and so is the coach it needs.
Your name has come up in conversations about college jobs. Have you ever seriously considered that path?
Yeah, and honestly, those guys are all miserable. I mean that. The timing was never right with my kids, I didn’t want to move all over the country — but beyond that, the way the game is right now at the college level, I’m not sure it would be a lot of fun for me. They’re just chasing players, living on pins and needles, making sure somebody doesn’t leave every week.
And I’ll be honest — there’s a little bit of that creeping into high school football now too. Not to the same degree, but it’s there.
What does football mean to a town like Bixby on a Friday night?
It’s big. We do Hi-Five Friday before every home game — our players stand at the entrances of the elementary schools and welcome the kids when they come in. Right now we’ve got 450 kids, first through seventh grade, out on the field doing drills. It’s just a big deal.
We’ve played our opening game at H.H. Chapman Stadium at the University of Tulsa — sponsored by QuikTrip — and had 23,000 people in the stands. People here keep up with high school football. When you walk into the grocery store, everyone wants to stop and ask how the team’s going to be.
That’s why we always tell our players — we love it when we’re out and about and we don’t hear something bad. We love hearing that you helped someone carry their groceries to the car. Because the whole town is watching.
What makes high school football in Oklahoma special to someone who’s never seen it?
It’s electric, and at the highest level right now, it’s uber competitive. If we start doing something that works, you can pretty much count on everyone else replicating it. High tide raises all ships. Every program around here is doing really good stuff, and when one of us sees another having success with something, they’re going to pick it up. That competition makes everyone better.
When you think about guys who are ten, twenty, thirty years removed from playing for you — what do you hope they say about their time at Bixby?
We made them better men. We do a spring game every year where we divide the team into four groups and invite 22 alumni to come back — they get a polo and get to be out on the field. We’ve got so many guys who are successful now as adults, as dads, as professionals.
Hopefully we taught them to be consistent. To have discipline. To be guys that their boss, their wife, the people in their life can count on. Guys who are selfless. That’s what I hope they carry. Not the trophies. That they’re better because they were here.