Durango High School football has had a problem, and Brett Sniffin hopes to be the solution as the Demons’ new football coach.
When most high school football programs have problems, it’s usually with the win and loss columns, but the Demons have been a successful program, with their last losing season in 2014. Durango won the 2020 3A state championship and in the 2020s, the Demons have made the playoffs every season, with a 79% winning percentage so far this decade.
The problem has been that none of the recent coaches have stayed at Durango for more than a year. Brett Sniffin will be Durango’s fifth head coach in five years.
After the 2022 season, Todd Casebier announced his retirement from coaching. Matt Burton coached the Demons in 2023, but left to return to Texas after one season, citing the high cost of living in Durango. Ryan Woolverton was the interim head coach in 2024, but retired from coaching after that season. Hunter Holmes took over the position in 2025, but stepped away from the position after last season due to frustrations with the Demon athletic department.
Now it’s Sniffin’s turn to snap the streak. Coming from Belton High School in Belton, Texas, Sniffin has been an educator and football coach for over 30 years. He’s ready to provide structure and discipline and consistency to a program that needs it. At the recent DHS Football Golf Classic, Sniffin said he’s already looking forward to the next one.
“It takes time to build trust and that’s what we’re going to do,” Sniffin said. “I always believe in leaving something better than you found it. I feel like I’ve done that everywhere I’ve been, and so that’s what I’m planning on doing here … building trust with the parents that we’re going to be around from one year to the next, but that’s what we plan on doing.”
Sniffin is originally from Iowa and is the son of Dwanye, who was also a football coach. Sniffin was always interested in coaching and being a part of a team. As he’s gotten older, Sniffin has always enjoyed working with young men, helping them achieve their goals and accomplish things they didn’t think they could accomplish.
After playing football in high school, Sniffin went to college in Iowa before becoming a coordinator in 1992 in Hudson High School in Iowa and was a part of the school’s 1994 state championship team. He was an assistant coach at Lamar Consolidated High School in Rosenberg, Texas, for eight years before becoming the head coach at Ridge Point High School in Missouri City, Texas, from 2010-2020, leading Ridge Point to the state semifinals in 2015.
At Belton, Sniffin finished with a 35-31 record in six seasons, qualifying for the playoffs in five consecutive seasons. Sniffin comes to Durango with a 110-53 career head coaching record.
Sniffin retired from coaching at Belton after the 2025 season. He looked into some college coaching jobs, some things outside football, but he knew that coaching football is what he does, so he looked on the job boards and saw the Durango job. He’s familiar with the area and knew it would be a beautiful place to live.
Durango School District Athletic and Activities Director Ryan Knorr said that Sniffin applied late in the process, in early January. Sniffin was interviewed a week later and was offered the job in late January.
“We struck gold,” Knorr said. “It was kind of a last-second connection … and I looked at his experience and thought, ‘Holy cow!’ He’s been at some pretty amazing high schools and just looking at his record and some of the things he had accomplished … Then, through that hiring process, I was just blown away by his take on creating culture and building programs, and he’s one of those lifelong educators.”
After striking out with some coaches in the past few years, Knorr knew he had to be incredibly transparent with the challenges of the Durango job and the additional resources that would be offered for Sniffin. In addition to being the football coach, Sniffin will be the assistant athletic director for Durango High School, which Knorr said will give Sniffin more control within the administrative system of his program.
Sniffin knows that Durango is an expensive place to live, but he said it’s not going to be an issue after his career as an educator. His wife, Jeanna, is an elementary school principal in Texas, and will be joining Sniffin in Durango soon. His youngest son, Joseph, just graduated from college after playing a few years of football. His oldest son, Jake, will be joining Sniffin on staff as the Demons’ defensive coordinator after coaching at Lubbock Roosevelt High School in Lubbock, Texas. Sniffin is looking forward to hiking, fishing and being in the outdoors with his family in Durango.
Another member of Sniffin’s coaching staff will be Mike Sutter, longtime line coach for the teams who has produced multiple Division I offensive linemen.
“That was a priority,” Sniffin said about Sutter. “You could tell by watching film for the last couple of years that the offensive linemen were the best coached group of people on the field. So, obviously, that’s the person I wanted to seek out, and coach Sutter, as far as I know, he’s gonna be part of it.”
Sniffin said his former players would describe him as intense, but as a coach who cares about his players. He also knows that he has to be flexible with the menu of what he wants to do on both sides of the ball to the personnel he has. Along with the football golf classic, Sniffin has spent some time with his returning players in the open weight room sessions.
“The kids are hungry,” Sniffin said about the Durango returners. “They’re hungry for some consistency, because they haven’t had it, so the few days we’ve been together, they’re just trying to soak up everything we’re talking about.”