Arlington assistant coach Greg Dailer has been named the next head coach of the Arlington football program.

The 34-year-old high school teacher is relatively new face around Arlington where he’s in his first year in the math department. However, Dailer brings nine years of teaching and eight years of coaching experience with him from the Orlando area where he spent six years as a football assistant and the head coach of Ocoee High School’s lacrosse team. He left the lacrosse program when was selected to take the helm of the football program, which he led for another two years.

After moving with his wife and five-year-old daughter to the Arlington area last year, Dailer was quick to join the 2007 football team as an assistant coach under former coach Tim Tramp.

“It was my goal to be a head coach again,” he said, explaining his motive to head the Arlington program. “I was an assistant last year and it opened quickly. I was just waiting for it.”

In his first year coaching in Washington, Dailer said he’s noticed some differences between the local teams and the ones he was familiar with in Florida. For one thing, football there draws a lot more kids than it seems to here.

“The teams are much bigger. A lot of kids don’t play both ways in Florida, both offense and defense,” he said, adding of Arlington, “Our kids have to play both ways because there’s less players. And the game is a little faster in Florida. But the kids are tough here, if not tougher, because they play both ways.”

In Dailer’s two years in Orlando, he saw his team’s record perform a 180 from his first season to the next. In the first year, the school accumulated record of 2-8, the next they had eight wins and three losses for a third-place league finish.

Dailer expects to retain Arlington’s defensive coordinator and continue running the 3-4 defense, but said the team may look a little different offensively.

“Well we’ll still be spread on offense, but a little more run-oriented,” he explained.

While there will be some changes taking place around the team as they return to the 4A classification system next season, Dailer counts a playoff run among his goals for the team and looks forward to sitting down with his first senior class to map out the team’s direction for the fall.

Though he’s been just announced, Dailer has already hit the ground running on the fall season.

“As soon as I got hired, we had a team meeting and started lifting immediately. On May 27, spring football begins,” he said.