By Brian Gosset
X – @gosset41
X – @gmsportsmedia1
For the past seven seasons, Austin Guest has been the head coach for both the boys and girls soccer teams at Midlothian High School. However, Guest’s resume doesn’t stop at seven when it comes to double duty.
The 2025-26 season marks his 20th season coaching two programs. Prior to Midlothian, Guest coached the boys and girls at Red Oak for seven years. When he arrived at Midlothian in 2005, he coached both teams for the first six years.
Guest recently won his 800th career match.
“I’ve been very fortunate,” he said. “I’ve been at great schools with great kids where the administrations – athletic and academic – have been supportive and let me do my job, my way. Along the way, I’ve had excellent coaches on my staff to work alongside me.
“I’ve got a wife and family who always cover everything else while I’m hitting those big hour weeks, so I can chase down what I love doing: coaching and trying to help kids grow into great adults.”
Both Midlothian teams have been consistently good. The boys are 12-7-4 overall and finished second in District 15-5A. The girls are 16-3-4 overall and won a district championship at 12-0-2. The Lady Panthers have won district the past four seasons while not losing a single match.
Both teams open the 5A D1 playoffs on Thursday at Waco High School. The girls game is first at 5 pm against Waco HS. The boys game follows against Killeen Chaparral.
“We just do everything we can to work out the schedule to prevent conflicts,” Guest said. “We find ways to make compromises in the playoffs.”
Following his playing career, Guest began coaching at the club level. He started the girls program at Red Oak and added on a boys team two years later. Before Red Oak, Guest started the varsity men’s program at SAGU (now Nelson University) and even coached there several years while at both high schools.
During the 2003 season, he led the Red Oak boys to the 4A state title. The Hawks finished with a 21-5-1 record after taking down WF Rider 1-0 in the semifinals and SA Alamo Heights 2-0 in the championship.
Guest left for Midlothian before the 2005 season and has spent the past two decades with the Panthers.
He coached the boys and girls teams until 2010. He moved to just the boys program through 2019 and then returned to coaching both teams since.
He led the Panther boys team to its first state tournament in 2024 – capped off with the 5A state championship. They went 25-2-3 with wins over Baytown Goose Creek Memorial and powerhouse Frisco Wakeland, a game they won 3-1.
“I’ve got a very close group of coaching friends to share the highs and lows with and to knock new ideas around – one of whom is my son who coaches now,” Guest said. “With that kind of support, you just have to work long enough and hard enough.
“On the other hand, maybe I’m just a big kid who never grew out of loving the game.”
Not many coaches pull double duty and work the hours Guest is working, but he was repetitive on the support from as high as the administration all the way down to the booster club and parents.
“I think the number of coaches doing both has declined over the years because it has gotten so much harder and time consuming to just coach one team. Coaching one is hard enough in most cases,” he said. “On the other hand though, coaching both teams creates the synergism you get when both of the programs are working together, collaboratively: players, parents, the booster club, etc.
“It’s a beautiful thing to see school communities when they are more united than divided.”
