Schuckman: Palmyra alum helping Texas team chase state football championship

QUINCY — Wilson Rigg has lived in Texas long enough his family can hear it in his voice.

“I’m starting to get an accent and everything,” he said with a chuckle.

He’s also been there long enough to finally live out a dream.

An All-Clarence Cannon Conference lineman from Palmyra who was an Academic All-American while playing at Culver-Stockton College, Rigg is part of the coaching staff at Anna High School, which will play in the Texas Class 4A Division I state championship at 11 a.m. Friday.

Anna (14-1) is facing Tyler Chapel Hill (13-2) at AT&T Stadium in Arlington. It is the first state title game appearance in Anna history.

“Until you do it, you don’t even really think it’s happening,” Rigg said. “We’ve been talking about it all week among the different coaches because none of us have done it. We’re looking at each other and it’s like, ‘Man, it doesn’t feel like we’re at the state title game.’

“It kind of feels like you can’t believe it. That’s what everyone has said. They can’t really believe what’s happening. It’s very surreal. But it’s definitely incredibly special, something you know when the season is said and done you’ll remember forever.”

The challenge of getting to a title game is enough to make it memorable.

“You have to win six playoff games,” Rigg said. “There are so many things that can go wrong in six playoff games, on top of facing someone who is really, really good. So I don’t know if I believed I’d ever be a part of it. I know it wasn’t what I thought would happen as a kid sitting in an office at Augustana College.”

That’s where his coaching career began.

A 6-foot-3, 270-pound defensive lineman who walked on at the University of Missouri after graduating from Palmyra in 2010, Rigg ended up transferring to C-SC, where he was a three-year letterwinner. His first coaching job after college was as the defensive line coach at Augustana, an NCAA Division III program located in the Quad Cities.

It wasn’t long after the wheels of fate started to turn.

A friend of Rigg’s dad, Scott, who had coached football and basketball at the high school and college levels in this area, reached out with a connect-the-dots scenario that led to a coaching opening at Midland Lee, Texas — a high school known for being part of the “Friday Night Lights” story but has since changed its name to Legacy High School.

“I was on vacation and that guy called me up and asked if I’d be interested in coming down to interview,” Rigg said. “He told me what the salary was, and it was a lot more than I was making at Augustana. So I went down and interviewed.”

It was his second trip ever to Texas, the first being a trip to San Antonio.

“Midland is a lot different than San Antonio,” Rigg said.

It proved to be the perfect starting point. After two years as the offensive line coach there, he joined head coach Seth Parr at Lubbock Coronado, where they coached Sawyer Robertson, currently the starting quarterback at Baylor.

Robertson was the Texas Gatorade of the Year his senior season and Coronado was the No. 2 passing offense in the nation. That success led to Parr being hired at Anna and bringing his staff with him, which included Rigg.

Three years later, the Coyotes are on the cusp of history.

When Anna went 13-1 last year, it marked the winningest season in program history and the first time in a quarter century it had won more than seven games in a season. Fast forward to this postseason and the Coyotes have won the first regional championship and state semifinal game in program history.

“Our kids have played their butts off, really bought into everything and kept it rolling week after week,” Rigg said.

That buy-in and growth is what Rigg loves about coaching at the high school level.

“At the end of the day, they’re playing football because they love playing football,” Rigg said. “Everyone has pride in that community, and there’s this expectation of winning. I like that pressure. Anna brought us here to win. No ifs, ands or buts about it. That’s what the expectation was. The kids have that expectation now, too.

“They have that confidence to go out and play and that’s kind of cool. You can change the culture of how a kid’s mindset is and that kid starts to believe they can win. Once a kid starts to believe they can win football games, they expect to be successful at every aspect of life. You can have a big influence on what a kid’s thought process is and what they do.”

This group is doing more than anyone ever imagined.

“You’ve got a chance to end the season with a win, which only one team gets to do,” Rigg said. “That’s pretty cool.”