New Burnet football receiver coach calls move ‘no brainer’

CAPTION: Two men who know and understand plenty about the receiver position – Burnet 7-on-7 coach Jaxon Shipley (left), a former wide receiver at the University of Texas who signed as an undrafted rookie free agent with the Arizona Cardinals in 2015, and Aaron Terry, the Bulldogs new receivers coach. Staff photo by Jennifer Fierro

Shortly after the Burnet Consolidated Independent School District football program landed Tyler Fambrough as its new offensive coordinator, the search began for the wide receivers coach.

That individual was a colleague of Fambrough at Cedar Park Vista Ridge, Aaron Terry.

Though Terry was on the Rangers’ defensive staff, his background screamed wide receiver and offense.

He was a receiver at A&M Consolidated High School and at Stephen F. Austin State University.

And equally important, he and Fambrough formed a bond that benefitted the Rangers on both sides of the ball.

“We talk every single day, and whenever I was on the opposite side of the ball, we talked every single day,” Terry said. “As I get in the truck to drive home, we’re calling each other, talking to each other, picking each other’s brains, what we saw, what I saw as a defensive coach here at Vista that I think could help him and what he saw defensively that could help us. And so it’s that old saying ‘iron sharpens iron.’”

The two coaches share many of the same offensive philosophies, especially in what they want to see in the passing attack. Terry called Fambrough “a mastermind.”

“It was a no brainer to come when he asked me if I wanted to come follow him,” the receivers coach said. “And then once I got around (Bulldogs head coach Ben) Speer and (Burnet CISD athletic director Grant) Freeman, I knew this was the place to be when it came to working with a great culture and what they’re trying to implement out here in Burnet.”

In many ways the Burnet CISD community fit what Terry wanted for his wife, Peyton, and their sons.

“I saw it as an opportunity for my family,” he said. “I thought big picture – what’s best for my wife and my boys? We wanted to get out of town, out of the city and get to somewhere that’s very tight knit, a close, country-style community where everybody shuts down and comes and supports the team. I have seen the tradition of what Burnet is all about and what started with that, and so I wanted that for my boys, I wanted that for my wife.”  

Though he grew up in College Station, Terry’s family owned land in Caldwell that fueled his desire to be in a smaller community, he said.

“Just having that opportunity for my boys is something that I wanted for them,” he said. “Just small town, Texas values and beliefs, all that. And so whenever that opportunity came up, it was a no brainer.”

Terry has a skill set beyond coaching in a program. He also served as Vista Ridge’s academic coordinator, helping the Rangers earn a team-high 3.41 grade point average last fall with 67 percent of the program making the honor roll.

The other two coordinator responsibilities were social media coordinator where he grew the views to more than 780,000 and reached almost 75,000 accounts and media where he oversaw the daily filming operations for practices and games.

While the program may benefit immensely from those talents, Terry was honest about his love for receivers.

“I think it’s the fact that you have the advantage of knowing where you’re going,” he said. “The defense doesn’t really have quite the idea where you’re going. I was the youngest of three, and it’s having the upperhand, the advantage of knowing where you’re going – the defense is guessing where you’re going to end up. But it’s having this little brother mentality of like ‘all right, I got you right here.’ It’s having the advantage of knowing where you’re going, the defense has no idea and to be able to either put someone on their butt while blocking or getting the ball then running away like a little-brother-from-their-older-brother kind of thing is what I love. And just the fact of just going back to knowing where you’re going, having the advantage over the defense and the defense has no idea what you’re going to do on this play. So it’s like a guessing game, but you know what you’re doing, and so I take pride in that – knowing what you’re doing, doing your job, executing it to your best ability.”