There is no town of Smithson Valley, nor a city square or business district. It’s just a large 5A high school off a country road in the middle of ranchland 40 minutes north of San Antonio, filled with a hodge-podge of kids from western Boerne, southern Blanco, Fischer, Canyon Lake, Bulverde and Spring Branch zoned to the neutral site.

When Larry Hill took the head coaching job 32 years ago, the lack of a town and an identity was seen as a weakness. Smithson Valley was 45-120-5 all-time, with zero playoff wins. Hill only hoped to turn in a couple of good seasons and parlay that into a big-time job. Three decades later, he turned Smithson Valley into one instead.

Hill is the ninth-winningest coach in Texas high school football history, with a 314-89 record over 32 seasons at Smithson Valley. He’s put down roots in the place he originally thought he’d leave long ago. He coached both his sons at Smithson Valley and then those two sons started families 10 minutes away from the school. This is the Hill Country, and all those kids from all those different towns are proud to be Smithson Valley Rangers.

“This school and its activities, particularly Friday night when they throw those lights on, becomes the thing that brings it together,” Hill said. “The rallying point. It’s turned into a strength.”

Hill has won every type of game in his career except for the big one - a state championship. There, he’s 0-4. He lost three within four years from 2001-04, including an overtime loss to Denton Ryan and on a field goal with six seconds left to Southlake Carroll. Last year, his Rangers ended a nearly 20-year championship drought, only to get steamrolled by Aledo 51-8.

On the Tuesday before his fifth appearance in the state championship, this time against Highland Park, he’s asked whether the lack of rings eats at him.

“You mean things like not being able to sleep, waking up in a sweat, or that gnawing voice in the back of your head that says, ‘You’re not good enough?’” Hill said. “Yeah, never happens.”

He says the Good Lord wires everyone differently, some with good looks and others with money. Hill received the ability to sink his teeth into something, bite down, and hang on until the job is done. That one-track mind made him one of the winningest coaches in Texas high school football history. It’s also what keeps him up at night, thinking about the one he hasn’t.

Hill has lost both of his parents in the past two years, his father, Glenn Hill Sr., in August at 93, and his mother, Mildred, before that. Yet they live on through the two sides of their son today.

There’s an old story about Hill's work ethic: he went on a family cruise in 2006 and brought game film to study at sea. Most think that’s his father, the old high school ball coach, in him. Truthfully, it’s his mom. He used to watch her grade papers until her fingers bled, refusing to miss one detail, resting only when her student got it right. 

“I watched her go over and over those details until they got it,” Hill said. “She made it her mission. She’d feel like she’d failed if they didn’t get it.”

The other lasting image from his childhood is his father, whom he calls the best man he’ll ever know, as a high school football coach. Hill and his brother revered him like the high schoolers who hung on his every word. At a young age, the boys realized Dad was doing more than winning games. 

“It impressed upon me at an early age that you could do both: you could relentlessly pursue winning and still be good for kids,” Hill said. “You didn’t have to sacrifice one for the other.”

Hill has lived in that balance for 32 years at Smithson Valley, setting his team’s goal at a state championship every year even though winning state isn’t what it’s all about. What matters is the pursuit of excellence, teaching kids they can’t do anything 80%, building them into men. If you cross every T and dot every i, you live with the results in peace. The process is more important than any record, whether 314 wins or none.

“If we win the thing Saturday, that won’t define my career any more than falling short four times has,” Hill said.