La Puente High School announced Wednesday that it has promoted defensive coordinator Erick Williams to varsity football head coach.

Williams replaces Scott Morrison, who left after two years as the Warriors’ head coach to become head coach at Corona Santiago. Williams, 38, has had assistant coach stops at La Puente, Workman, Esperanza, Pioneer and Arroyo, but this will be his first head coach position.

“I’m honored and blessed, especially to follow someone like Coach Morrison,” Williams said. “To be underneath him for the past four years, he’s helped me grow as a coach and a person.

“To be at La Puente where it’s a good football atmosphere, I can’t complain.”

Morrison, who is still the school’s athletic director, was part of the hiring committee. He estimated about 20 applicants tried for the job but since the school couldn’t guarantee an on-campus teaching position, interested parties from as far away as Maryland and Texas had to be turned away. Williams will be an off-campus coach.

“As the former coach, I hope that I left the program in a better place than I found it and I found it in a good pretty good place,” Morrison said. “As the athletic director, I hope I found the guy who is going to to make it ever better. The continuity factor is nice, but we want to be able to grow and move ahead.

“Coach Williams answers the continuity aspect but also brings the fire that will continue to move this program in a positive direction.”

La Puente was 7-4 in both of Morrison’s two seasons. Prior to that, the program enjoyed success under former coach Brandon Rohrer, who left to take the head job at Etiwanda and is now offensive coordinator at Glendora.

Williams expects his coaching staff will have many familiar faces from last season and says tactically the Warrirors won’t change much despite a few tweaks here and there.