The Warrior way: Mike Granato takes over West Orange High football program

The football field at West Orange High is a place of familiarity for Winter Garden resident Mike Granato.

He’s sat in the bleachers and he’s watched battles unfold on the field. Now he’ll watch the games from a slightly different perspective — that of the program’s new head coach. 

Even though the news is fresh, Granato can’t help but think about how West Orange High football and his life are intertwined.

“Funny little thing about it is the first high school football game I went to was a West Orange football game back in 1997,” Granato said. “I think it’s just surreal that my first head coaching opportunity — and what I ultimately want to be my last head coaching opportunity — (is West Orange).”

The news broke that Granato — who previously served as an assistant football coach at Edgewater High School — had been hired as the program’s coach Monday, Jan. 27.

FOR THE LOVE OF THE GAME

Granato always has loved football, but it wasn’t until 2007 before he decided to give coaching a chance.

That year, he walked into the office of Winter Park High School football coach Tim Shifflet looking for something — anything — to do.

“The only reason I was given a job was because they had an intensive reading position open,” Granato said. “I told coach Shifflet — who was one of my coaches when I was at Bishop Moore — and I said, ‘I want to be a football coach and I’ll take any job that you have.’”

“Funny little thing about it is the first high school football game I went to was a West Orange football game back in 1997. I think it’s just surreal that my first head coaching opportunity — and what I ultimately want to be my last head coaching opportunity — (is West Orange).”

— Mike Granato

Granato was offered a role coaching on the ninth-grade team, and there he helped turn a 4-6 program into a regional championship team from 2017 to 2019. He also helped establish one of the first spread offenses in Central Florida, Granato said.

From there Granato’s stock rose and rose as he found work coaching at schools like Madison County, Seminole, Wekiva, Apopka and most recently at Edgewater — a school that has seen a resurgence under head coach Cameron Duke, who Granato sees as an inspiration for his own coaching. But it was at Madison County — where he helped lead the Cowboys to back-to-back state title appearances in 2011 and 2012 — that Granato developed his coaching mindset the most.

“It’s a truly, truly special place and I tell everybody that I may have been 27 years old at the time, but Madison County taught me how to be a man, how to be a better teacher and ultimately taught me how to coach football the right way,” Granato said. “What I learned up there from Mike Coe — who is a very dear brother to me — was that Xs and Os are the last part about being a high school football coach. And I learned there that relationships are ultimately what define who we are in this life.”

CHANGING THE CULTURE

Granato’s selection as the new head coach came after an interview process by the school, which was looking for someone who could provide stability to a program that has seen two coaches come and go in the last two years. 

“I knew that the principal needed to make the right hire, and Ms. Gordon was more than upfront and transparent about being able to hire the right person given what the program had been through,” Granato said. “I’ve been through some coaching transitions before as an assistant and I’ve seen the good, the bad and the ugly.”

Between Granato being a local who understood where the program should be and having dealt with these types of situations in the past, it was logical that he would be the guy who could change the culture of the program.

While Granato will oversee the team as a whole, he’ll also work with the defensive backs — a position he holds near and dear. And though he can’t name names yet as it relates to assistants, he said that he’d be working with a staff that puts players’ well-being first, because in the long run that’s what leads to greater things — for both a program and its people, Granato said. It’s something he saw work firsthand at Edgewater.

“Championships are decided by great men and great players that have great character,” Granato said. “Getting them to a level of excellence and achieving the best version of themselves personally, spiritually and in the community is what will ultimately drive a championship program.”