Nickolas Cooney is an ASU Cronkite School of Journalism student assigned to cover Horizon Honors High School for AZPreps365.com

Horizon Honors has a new coach but he’s a familiar face. Tom Kandler was hired on Jan. 15.

“The kids are great. I’m real happy to be here and it’s a little weird being on this side with these guys when for so many years I went against them,” Kandler said.

Kandler was the head coach at Tempe Prep the last six years before taking the job at Horizon Honors.

“They’ve always been very competitive,” said Kandler. “We’re in a tough situation, we’re one of the smallest 3A schools. Next year we’ll be 2A.

Under Kandler, Horizon Honors is looking to improve upon last season when it went 3-7 in the region. Two of the main seniors are Trey Faulkner and Stetler Huth.

“I feel pretty good about it,” Faulkner said. “I think it will be a pretty good year. Just gotta get the chemistry down with the new coach and get everything together, but I think we can do pretty good, so I have some faith going into it.”

“I also agree,” said Huth. “This coach seems very dedicated and wanting to win so once we kind of get with his rhythm and he knows who we all are I think we have a pretty solid chance at winning a lot of games and even winning the division.”

The team lost four seniors last year but Kandler is confident Horizon Honors still has the talent to help fill the gaps and to improve.

“They lost a real good group,” said Kandler. “There are four kids who pretty much started for about…certainly two years but some of them three, some of them four. So that’s gonna be a big loss but there is also a real good group of seniors here and juniors that are coming back. We also had some transfers come in.”

Huth also likes two freshman breaking in. “We got a lot more players to fill in those gaps. We definitely have a better chance at having the talent.”