New football coach. New boys basketball coach. New baseball coach. New district.

It’s a season of “new” for Johnson as it enters a new school year.

When UIL redistricting and realignment sent the Hays County school south into a district with schools between Austin and San Antonio in February, it was the first major change for the Jaguars' athletic department for the new school year. Then boys basketball coach Ben Kinnison took the Mansfield Legacy job in the spring, football coach Steve Hoffman stepped down in June, and baseball coach Marc Durham left to coach at Van Vleck to be closer to family.

In the midst of all this, the school also received a new principal.

And while turnover is common in any high school athletic department, such changes in all three traditional boys sports are something you don’t see often. But after the school spent two years in an Austin-area district where its longest trip was to Del Valle, the switch to a district consisting of Cibolo Steele, New Braunfels Canyon, Converse Judson, San Antonio East Central, San Marcos and Schertz Clemens, where hour-plus road trips will be the norm, is the biggest one affecting the athletic department.

“We were really surprised the UIL moved us out of that district because geography is supposed to be the biggest thing,” said interim football coach and athletic coordinator Samuel Carlin, who was promoted from offensive coordinator to replace Hoffman in late June. “But it is what it is, and those are the uncontrollables you have to deal with.”

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Late nights on Tuesdays and Fridays are going to be the norm for the school's traditional team sports such as volleyball, basketball, baseball, soccer and softball, with the closest district opponent — San Marcos — some 25 miles away while the farthest — East Central — requires a 70-mile trip.

“It’s kind of a catch-22,” volleyball coach Thomas Kane said. “You have to work out the challenge of a new district and new opponents … but it will be a little tough with the athletic periods and the travel.  As a staff, we’ve stressed the academic side. If we’re driving an hour and 20 minutes into San Antonio, that’s time you could be using to study and get your homework finished.”

Kane will lean on experience from his five years at Wimberley, where in one UIL cycle his teams had to travel to Gonzales and Yoakum, which are east of Seguin.

“That was very similar to what we’re about to go through, and I think that helps me understand the needs of this,” he said.

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The longest trips will come for the sports that make the playoffs. For the first couple of rounds of the postseason, Johnson will play teams from South Texas, with possible matchups against schools from Laredo, Edinburg and Brownsville. Even with postseason games at neutral sites, the Jaguars are still likely to have at least a two-hour drive one way.

“That will be the craziest travel,” Kane said. “We’d go way south.”

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It's not just a gas problem for Johnson

For some programs, it’s more than just an increase in travel.

Girls soccer coach Michael Banning noted that most schools in the new district will field only one subvarsity team, which left him needing to fill an entire schedule for his second subvarsity squad. And the change from a nine-team district to one with only seven teams left all programs needing to fill significantly more scheduling holes than in the past two years.

Most filled those slots with Austin-area schools, including the football team, which will play all four of its nondistrict games — against Cedar Ridge, Stony Point, Austin High and Hays County rival Dripping Springs — locally.

“We thought it would be a good idea to stay in the Austin area in the nondistrict,” Carlin said.

Johnson coach: 'We'll find out how it goes'

There are a few positives to the change.

The most notable is getting away from local powerhouses Westlake, Lake Travis and Dripping Springs, which is beneficial from a competition standpoint, though Banning said he and the other coaches can’t look at it that way.

“All of these programs are good, and you have to respect everyone,” Banning said. “We’re going into a bit of an unknown with this district.”

Still, travel will be Johnson’s biggest adjustment, with the school’s travel budget about to skyrocket. However, like most things in life, it could be worse for Johnson, and some coaches are taking that perspective.

“You could be in West Texas, where you have to travel three hours for a game,” new boys basketball coach Josh Welch said. “We’ll find out how it goes. It’ll be new to me as it is to our players. But it’s our job as coaches to get them prepared.”

This article originally appeared on Austin American-Statesman: Johnson Jaguars brace for change in new UIL district