As a teenager he intensely watched from the sidelines of a basketball court, his nose filled with the smell of sweat, his ears with the sound of small feet on the wooden floor. His eyes were fixed on one of the 9 year olds he coached as the child went up for a layup. Sixteen years later the same man watched a shot from a similar position, but now a high school junior has launched the ball, and this time, the ball ricocheted off the backboard and through the hoop. Coach Travis Schulte nodded his approval as the crowd behind him roared, before he motioned his team into a huddle.

Schulte joined the staff in late spring of 2015 as head boys’ basketball coach and health science teacher, after coaching high school boys’ basketball for 20 years across Texas. Schulte’s family includes his wife Shawna and his two daughters, Shaylin, 10, and Tateum, 7.

“I grew up in Nazareth, Texas, graduated from there, went to Texas Tech University for one semester, then I went to WT.” said Schulte, who went on to graduate from West Texas A&M University.

After college graduation, Schulte coached at Hereford High School for five years.

“While I was there we played in the state championship football game and also the final four in basketball,” Schulte said. “After that I went to Sunray. Sunray was my first head basketball coaching job.”

Schulte was in Sunray for four years, followed by a year in Pampa. After Pampa, he coached in Perryton for nine years before finally returning to Canyon to coach, a position that brings him full circle.

“My high school coaches were big influences on me,” Schulte said. “They were young, energetic guys who always gave a hundred percent, and I just really admired them and looked up to them.”

As he began to see coaching as a potential career, he began to coach as a volunteer.

“I started a team of some of the younger kids there in Nazareth when I was still in high school,” Schulte said. “I started coaching those kids when they were in fourth and fifth grade, coached them all the way until they ended up in junior high. Those guys ended up being back-to-back state champions, so it was really cool to work with kids like that.”

Schulte said he is excited to once again be working with teams of driven players.

“We’re going play hard, and that’s something that Coach Crenshaw and Coach Underwood did great on,” Schulte said. “These kids come in and they know how to work. That’s not something that comes natural. That was built and worked on before I got here. That’s something we are going to build on.”

Part of Schulte’s plans to build on this work ethic will be the implantation of new play techniques for the team.

“Our style of play will be a little different,” Schulte said. “Defensively we’ll be very similar; offensively we will be very different.”

Part of Schulte’s plan includes a very fast-paced kind of game, to force up the tempo with players moving up and down the court more quickly.

“Hopefully, it’s going to be an exciting style to watch” Schulte said. “I know it’s an exciting style for the kids to play. So far their feedback has been awesome. They just love it.”