A new era of Liberty football was officially cemented Monday night, when Shawn Daignault was approved at the school board meeting to become the newest football coach of the Hurricane program.

Daignault takes over for John Truby, who resigned in December after going 37-46 in eight seasons.

With the Liberty job being one of the premier positions in the region, Daignault is excited about the opportunity to run his own program for the first time.

“It’s a big job in the conference and it’s exciting, but I also put pressure on myself to succeed with this being my first head coaching job,” he said. “It’s been very humbling to have so many messages from people in the community the past couple of days, but there’s work to do here and I’m ready to hit the ground running.”

Daignault has 23 years of college coaching experience, primarily on the defensive side of the ball. He spent the past three years as defensive coordinator at Northampton with former K-Kids’ coach Kyle Haas, who left in December to take the Bethlehem Catholic position.

From 1995-2018, he’s coached at Middlebury College (VT), Juniata, Trinity College (Hartford), US Merchant Marine Academy (NY), University of Pennsylvania, Stony Brook (NY), and Moravian. Daignault played college football at Middlebury from 1991-94 as a linebacker.

His latest stop at Moravian was his longest, coaching with the Greyhounds from 2009-2018.

The 48-year-old father of three boys in the Bethlehem Area School District, felt it was a no-brainer to apply for the position when it opened up last month.

“Living in Bethlehem, I’ve always kept my eye on the program and as a coach at Northampton the past three years, you got to see all the talent they had on film,” he said. “They’ve always had athletes all over the field and big linemen. I always thought there was a lot of potential.”

Ironically, Northampton’s lone win last season came against Liberty in a 38-10 result and some of the things he saw on film will become catalysts for helping the program turn the corner moving forward, as the ‘Canes went 0-6 last season.

“I think discipline, ownership and focusing on the little things will be the part of the first message to these guys,” Daignault said. “I think when you have those things under control, the bigger results will happen. I’ll have zoom meetings with the team this week and plan to meet with each player virtually to see how they tick.”

With his former boss, Kyle Haas, across town at Becahi, Daignault should get the hang of how big the job is pretty quickly.

“We’ve already exchanged a bunch of text messages about the rivalry,” he said. “I’m very excited about getting my staff finalized and getting to work.”