Joseph Sciarrino is an ASU Cronkite School of Journalism student assigned to cover Seton Catholic Preparatory High School for AZPreps365.com

PHOENIX – In 2019, the New England Patriots secured their sixth Super Bowl victory as Lil Nas X’s song "Old Town Road" spent 19 straight weeks at No. 1 on the Billboard Hot 100 chart.

Although the music and NFL world looked vastly different seven years ago, Seton Catholic varsity football head coach Matt Hanshaw’s life appeared even more unrecognizable.

Back then, Hanshaw didn’t have a varsity head coaching role, hadn’t married his wife and didn’t have either of his two kids.

Looking back, he couldn’t help but laugh. 

“That person seven years ago would be super proud of the man that I am today,” Hanshaw said.

After holding multiple varsity football coaching positions at Pinnacle High School, Hanshaw left in hopes of becoming a head coach for a varsity team for the first time. As his name circulated, Sentinels athletic director Jim Shewbridge decided to take a chance on Hanshaw, who strengthened Seton Catholic’s community in his first year.

“Honestly, just the culture around the kids, it just feels like there’s this different feel of pride wearing the jersey and being a part of the team,” Seton Catholic assistant athletic director Autumn Kish said. “The kids just seem like they have something bigger to fight for.”

Hanshaw’s eventual relationship with Seton Catholic didn’t develop overnight.

It started with an itch.

As a varsity Pioneers coach from 2020-25, Hanshaw guided Pinnacle to a combined 32-26 regular season record, which included a trip to the 6A State Championship Game in 2022.

But the on-field success wasn’t the most valuable thing that Hanshaw attained.

Instead, it was the knowledge that he received from Pinnacle varsity football head coach Dana Zupke.

“He’s the best,” Hanshaw said. “I can’t say enough good things about Dana Zupke. I’ll stand on (a) hill for him until the end of time.”

The pair often spoke about the fundamentals of the game along with the reasons behind Zupke's decisions for the program.

After becoming the Pioneers’ assistant head coach, Hanshaw took on an even bigger role.

That's when the itch to take the next step arose.

And Hanshaw scratched it.

“After the 2025 season, I just remember me and coach [Zupke] meeting at the end of the year and I was like, 'Hey man, I’m going to put my name out there for some jobs just so you’re aware,” Hanshaw said. “And coach Zupke couldn’t have been better for me.”

After the meeting, their relationship didn’t vanish.

It strengthened.

Zupke wrote Hanshaw a “great” letter of recommendation and assisted him during the interview process, making him “everything that you could ever want” in a friend, Hanshaw said.

“When you grow up through a career, you hope to have a mentor and somebody that’s like that,” Hanshaw said. “Coach [Zupke] was great because he always said, ‘I want you guys to go on and get better jobs and be head coaches and do whatever you want to do in your career.”

Now a proud member of the Sentinels community, Hanshaw still believed in the impact that the word-of-the-week tradition had at Pinnacle.

“I saw what it did for us at Pinnacle and I wanted to bring it here [Seton Catholic],” Hanshaw said. “I think just having that word of the week just adds that little bit of extra focus for the kids.”

So he implemented it.

With the help of Character Matters, an organization that works with coaches to create healthy habits for their athletes, Hanshaw introduced the custom to the team.

“It’s been a really big culture shift for us,” Kish said. “And it’s all because of Hanshaw. The things he’s instilling in the kids. They’re focusing on [traits], not just performance-wise but character-wise.”

But Kish wasn’t the only one who maneuvered big changes early on.

Coming from Pinnacle, a high school with more than 2,000 students to a school with less than 600 at Seton Catholic was like stepping into a new world for Hanshaw.

However, being a teacher made the transition easier for him.

“[He’s] more relatable,” junior Sentinels linebacker Coree Edwards said. “He’s been in our shoes with both practice and school. He knows what we’re going through.”

And as a USA South Academic All-Conference award recipient, given to collegiate athletes who finished with a 3.0 or higher grade point average in each semester, Hanshaw understood the importance of being a well-rounded student-athlete. 

“At the end of the day, they’re here to do school,” Hanshaw said. “They’re here to get good grades so that it can hopefully propel them on to whatever college or career that they want to go into.”

Although Hanshaw’s ability to establish connections with athletes may look simple, it’s a skill that he’s worked on since college. 

Jim Sypult, Hanshaw’s former football head coach at Methodist University, located in Fayetteville, North Carolina, always preached about treating people correctly, Hanshaw said.

And Hanshaw never let it go. 

“[We] don’t just care about winning football games on Friday nights, but we care about them as a person, a human being and about what’s going on in their lives,” Hanshaw said.