DAYTONA BEACH — Father Lopez is all in on its football program.
The Catholic private high school competes in the second-smallest classification in FHSAA football, Class 1A, and went 0-9 just two seasons ago. But the Green Wave’s program found a promising future when it was taken over by Mark Gabbard in 2025.
Gabbard was Father Lopez’s offensive coordinator during that winless season in 2024, but he led the Green Wave to a playoff berth in his first season at the helm a year ago. Prior to his move to Florida, Gabbard was an offensive coordinator for Centennial High School, a perennial Arizona powerhouse that found itself near the top of the national rankings pretty routinely.
The hope for Gabbard and the rest of Father Lopez’s administration is simple. They want to set up a dynasty that can eventually compete with the best football programs across the Sunshine State.
It’s an ambitious goal for a school that historically hovers around .500 on a good year, but investments have already been placed to build the foundation for a Father Lopez rise in the future.
The No. 1 indicator toward the Green Wave’s goal has been an overhauled coaching staff that features several former Division I football players, including a former pro.
Just this offseason alone, Gabbard hired former D1 athletes Raymond Woodie III, Jeremiah Taylor and Ryan Swoboda. Woodie was a safety at Florida State, Cal and Bethune-Cookman, Taylor was a Division 1 sprinter at Stonehill College and Swoboda was an offensive lineman for UCF before playing NFL ball in 2023.
They join a coaching staff that included Division I football players Juwan Ross (defensive line coach) and Brandon Hill (cornerbacks coach), as well as offensive line coach Caden Gabbard, who played Division III football.
“Coach is a great guy coming from Arizona, he’s been a winner where he’s been. And just the atmosphere and the program, and his visions, our goal is to make this one of the premier programs in Florida,” Woodie said.
Woodie has taken over the Green Wave’s wide receiver and safety rooms. Taylor is the team’s running backs and speed coach, and Swoboda provides professional-level insight as a quality control assistant for the offensive line.
For Father Lopez’s upperclassmen, who are largely homegrown athletes from nearby communities and parishes, the difference in the football program has been night and day from their freshman season.
“We have so many more coaches for positions,” senior offensive lineman Vinny Zimmerer said. “Instead of our quarterback coach having to worry about linebackers and the O-line, we now have separate coaches. We can get so much more work in and develop our players a lot better.”
“It’s a game changer,” senior tight end Rylan DeMarsh said. “… Sophomore year, we got coach Gabbard as our OC randomly, and the rest of the coaching staff still wasn’t up to par with him, so those first two years were not very good. And then he became head coach my junior year, and he started surrounding everybody and ourselves with former D1 athletes, NFL players. It’s just been great.”
Father Lopez’s new wealth of knowledge has probably been the most direct adjustment toward the Florida football superiority it hopes to eventually achieve, but there have been other improvements made around campus as well.
According to Gabbard, the “very first thing” he did when he became head coach was a $50,000 renovation to the Green Wave’s weight room. It was immediately approved by the school’s chain of command that features athletic director Brad Ridenour, principal Marie Gallo-Lethcoe and president Leigh Svajko, all of whom are also committed to Gabbard’s goal for sustained success on the gridiron.
“The reason I felt this could be done here at Father Lopez is, first and foremost, the support here is off the charts, the funding is off the charts. Anything that we need, if I can make it make sense, the answer is yes,” Gabbard said. “… (The weight room) wasn’t even a question. It was like, ‘Yeah, let’s do that, that’s smart.’ Then I was just given another 15 grand to finish everything off this summer. But if we make it make sense to this administration and to this campus, and it’s smart, the answer is yes 99% of the time.”
One of the next transformations Gabbard hopes to get done in the future is installing a replay system so Father Lopez can look at what its opponents are doing on the sidelines, allowing the Green Wave to adjust midgame rather than wait for a post-game film session.
And Gabbard still isn’t done adding to his coaching staff, which he says has at least two more additions and potentially a third that also has professional experience.
“The more eyes, the more experience we can have, the better,” Gabbard said. “And especially those D1 guys, or those guys that played collegiate at all, they just bring a whole different perspective to your coaching staff.”
The end goal for Father Lopez is making steady improvements with its players thanks to its high-level coaching staff and facilities that eventually draw players from around Volusia County. For those that couldn’t afford Father Lopez’s $15,000 tuition, Florida’s state-funded voucher program would provide potential athletes $7,500. The Green Wave also have an endowment program that 80% of their students are already on, Gabbard said, and that would hopefully provide some of the other half that the state fund couldn’t.
However, this overhaul will take years to complete. It’s not easy to be a consistent heavy hitter in any state, let alone one of the most competitive football states in the country. But as the old adage goes, Rome wasn’t built in a day, and Gabbard has already made peace with that fact.
The 49-year-old, a Catholic himself, isn’t treating Father Lopez as a stepping stone for greener pastures. He’s committed to the Green Wave for as long as he’s still coaching.
“It’s no secret. If you look at the history here, coaches are here for two years, and they split. They build something decent, then they split,” Gabbard said. “For me, with the age that I’m at, 49 years old, I don’t want to keep rebuilding programs and program jumping. I would love to be here for the next 20 years, walk away in the sunset, retire here and just sit back and let somebody else take it over and run with it.”
This article originally appeared on The Daytona Beach News-Journal: How Father Lopez plans to become Florida gridiron powerhouse
Reporting by Zach Allen, Daytona Beach News-Journal / The Daytona Beach News-Journal
USA TODAY Network via Reuters Connect
By Zach Allen, Daytona Beach News-Journal | USA TODAY Network
