Granite City turns to former Belleville West captain to revive football program

Just in time for their return to the Southwestern Conference, the Granite City Warriors have a new football coach.

Sherand Boyd Jr., a seasoned assistant coach and a former standout at Belleville West, was recently named head coach at Granite City High School. He also will serve as a special education teacher next school year.

“My wife and I, we see this as a ministry,” Boyd said. “We’re looking forward to pouring into this community. We see this as a tremendous opportunity to inspire the world’s (next) leaders, and what better platform to do that?”

Boyd’s roots in metro-east athletics run deep.

Before a collegiate football career at the University of Northern Colorado, Boyd was both a quarterback and outside linebacker for the Maroons and was elected team captain at both stops.

This will be Boyd’s first head coaching position, but he brings seven years of experience coaching and teaching in local schools, including Belleville West and, most recently, Edwardsville High School. “To me, a great coach is an excellent educator. They’re able to teach, they’re able to equip students with the skills they need and empower them to do those things,” Boyd said of his two roles. “It’s just one area has a football and the other area doesn’t have a football.”

Previously, when the position was posted for the 2026-27 season, Athletic Director John Moad and now-former head coach Steve Roustio said they hoped the next coach would bring stability and more wins to the program.

The Warriors have not won a game in three seasons and ended the past two campaigns 0-9. The last time Granite City reached the playoffs was 2018.

Boyd will be the sixth head coach since then.

Roustio took over the program in 2023 after the previous coach resigned with two games left in the season.

Boyd said he knows rebooting the program starts with a new foundation. “I’ve been a part of teams who have been 0-9 before, and the one thing I can look at was our mindset was not set on winning,” Boyd said. “The true definition of winning is doing the right thing in our classroom, doing the right thing in all of our relationships and doing the right thing on the football field … I believe winning is a byproduct of those elements.”

He also said it’s important to market the program and gain buy-in, especially from potential student-athletes.

“I think when you have a history of a program where you haven’t been successful, you have a lot of guys that are walking the hallways who should be playing football and should be playing other sports,” Boyd said.

Boyd says being present in the high school will naturally help him develop his athletes’ character and build excitement for Warrior football. “They constantly see their leader, they see a role model. You’re able to reiterate expectations. They see you interacting with the same teachers that they have, they see you interacting with their friends, they see you interacting with the principal, the admin (who are) over them,” Boyd said.

“They need to see that, and I think that’s extremely important. Great teaching is being able to model what you want your students to know, and being in the school allows for that.”

This story was originally published February 3, 2026 at 6:00 AM.