By BAKER ELLIS / Sports Editor 

CALERA – The reigning ASWA 4A football Coach of the Year is on the move as the coaching carousel continues in Shelby County. Andrew Zow, who has spent the last four seasons at the helm of the Montevallo football program, has been tapped as the new head football coach at Calera High School, according to Calera principal Joel Dixon.

“It’s true,” Dixon said on Jan. 21. “We’re very excited about getting him.”

Zow, who also quarterbacked the Alabama Crimson Tide from 1998-2001, moves to Calera from Montevallo. He took the Montevallo job in 2012, where he toiled as the Bulldogs’ head coach for three seasons without much success, accumulating a 4-26 record from 2012-14. In 2015 however, his Montevallo squad was one of the hottest teams in the state over the first two months of the season as the Bulldogs jumped out to a 7-0 start. They finished the season with a 9-3 record and an appearance in the second round of the state playoffs. Montevallo also hosted and won a playoff game for the first time since 1995.

The Calera job opened on Dec. 17 when then-Calera head coach Wiley McKeller stepped down from the position to accept the head coaching job at 2A Vincent.

“The job had to be posted for two weeks,” Dixon explained. “So I spent my Christmas vacation checking that every day to see who had applied. We came back and did interviews from the seventh through the 11^th.”

Dixon said Zow was selected from 38 applicants for the Calera job.

“Andrew came in and impressed all of us both in terms of his knowledge of the game and his track record with shaping young men,” Dixon said. “I went into this wanting first and foremost to get someone that understood coaching football is about shaping young men and being a positive impact.”

Zow was approved by the Shelby County Board of Education on Jan. 21. He will teach PE at Calera as well as coaching the Eagles, and will begin working at Calera effective immediately.