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Christian County names Dustin Lopez new football coach

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Purple88

Purple88

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This is GREAT news for Christian County Football. Really good luck to them. With the Hoptown team members coming back they should compete in 6A District 1!

Go Tigers!

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WKU52

WKU52

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6 hours ago, Breds82 said:

Can we get some background on the new hire for us not in the know? Congrats coach.

Not sure on years but hometown guy. Been there for awhile and cares about the program. Played college ball at Memphis.

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theguru

theguru

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11 hours ago, Breds82 said:

Can we get some background on the new hire for us not in the know? Congrats coach.

4 hours ago, WKU52 said:

Not sure on years but hometown guy. Been there for awhile and cares about the program. Played college ball at Memphis.

Christian County Now did a short article on Coach Lopez.  He sounds humble, family oriented, and ready to get to work:

Coach Lopez is a Hopkinsville native whose football journey began as a standout player at Hopkinsville High School before continuing at Minnesota West Community College, where he earned Junior College All-American Honorable Mention honors, according to CCPS.

He later transferred to the University of Memphis, starting in 18 of 31 games from 2004–2006, and went on to play three seasons of Arena Football for multiple teams. Lopez began his coaching career in Tennessee and was named the Metro-Nashville Assistant Coach of the Year by the Tennessee Tribune in 2015 and helped lead teams to numerous district, regional, and state tournament appearances. Before being named head coach in 2024, he spent ten years as an assistant with the HHS Tigers.

https://christiancountynow.com/news/267762-im-ready-to-get-to-work-dustin-lopez-named-head-football-coach-for-christian-county-tigers/

Colonels_Wear_Blue

Colonels_Wear_Blue

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On 12/3/2025 at 3:50 AM, Breds82 said:

Can we get some background on the new hire for us not in the know? Congrats coach.

18 hours ago, WKU52 said:

Not sure on years but hometown guy. Been there for awhile and cares about the program. Played college ball at Memphis.

He was a hell of an athlete in high school and college. 2003 Hopkinsville grad. Started in football and hoops at Todd Central his sophomore and junior years. He was kinda Mr. Everything for Todd...RB, WR, DB, and also had some significant time at QB later in his junior year. Honorable mention AP All-State defensive back as a junior. Ended up at Hoptown his senior year after his mom took a new job and the family moved. He played WR for at Hoptown...they ended up going to Boyle in the semifinals and losing 13-7, and Lopez was honorable mention at WR that year in the AP All-State team. Also played basketball for the Tigers.

Spent a year at Minnesota West JUCO and was a honorable mention on the 2003 All-American team. That got him college offers from UofL and Memphis. Ended up at Memphis and started at DB for three years. I think he played a year or two of arena football before he went back to Hoptown to coach DBs under Dixie Jones. Then he took a job as DC at Hillsboro (TN) when Craig Clayton took over as head coach...Clayton was his coach during his senior year at Hoptown. Clayton and Lopez were at Hillsboro from 2012-2016 and went 43-21 in 5 seasons with a state finals appearance and a runner-up trophy in 2014. Then in 2017 Coach Clayton returned as head coach at Hoptown, bringing Lopez with him as DC.

Coach Clayton retired at the end of the 2021 football season, a few months prior to the announcement that Christian County High School and Hopkinsville High School would be consolidating...which did a lot of damage to both schools' athletic programs, frankly. There was some talk about Coach Lo being a front-runner for the job at Hoptown, but Mark Clark ended up with the job after reportedly making a handshake agreement to take over as head coach of the new consolidated Christian County school once it opened. Lopez stuck with the Hoptown program under Coach Clark. Things didn't exactly go ideally with the consolidation, though, and it took longer than expected. That caused all the more disruption to the CC and HHS athletic programs, and Coach Clark was catching a whole lot of flak in the process. After the new school plans continued to have delays as well as a 1-9 football season for Hoptown in 2023, Coach Clark ended up heading back up to the homeland in Louisville to re-join Chris Wolfe's staff at Male. That left Hopkinsville's AD with the task of finding someone who was willing to take a job as head coach of a struggling football program that was guaranteed to only have 2 more years of existence....not exactly a strong resume move for potential coaching candidates.

Lopez stepped in as HC in 2024. He managed to talk about a dozen kids into joining the team that offseason. In 2024 the Tigers improved from 1-9 the previous season to 3-7, and 4 of those losses were by 1 touchdown or less. Then this past season he added about 10 more kids to the roster during the offseason...went from a roster of 57 the year before he took the head coaching whistle to having a roster of 77 this last year, and he led them to a 7-5 final season. Strong freakin' work, if you ask me.


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theguru

theguru

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1 minute ago, thsrocks said:

Coach Lopez, I believe Trinity has an early opening on next season's schedule. Please give AD Sean Duggins a call. 

I think it is early for that, let's give Coach Lopez two or three years and then maybe. 

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