Cottonwood athletic director Greg Southwick heads into retirement having had a big hand in saving the program
Jul 02, 2025 03:37PM ● By Brian Shaw
Cottonwood’s longtime athletic director gave this writer a hard time at first, claiming that his name was spelled with two G’s (Gregg) nearly 10 years ago.
He later admitted after a bit of email back and forth that it was spelled with only one G. Southwick kept yours truly going for a few weeks, though.
Sometimes singlehandedly, and often with a little help from some such biology teacher-turned-football coach Casey Miller, Southwick installed teachers as coaches—a move fewer athletic departments are doing these days.
It drew criticism from some, and admiration from others that could not fathom how a history teacher named Teresa Soracco became one of Utah high school girls’ basketball’s most formidable coaches, having arrived here from northern California not long before she accepted the job, and accepted all the after-hours work that came with it.
Southwick, himself a longtime coach of several sports including golf and basketball, offered to help and together they installed a full-court zone trap by the end of the first season, reeling off three consecutive Region 10 titles by the conclusion of this school year. At the end of this third season, Cottonwood’s women sent two of its top players to Butte College in California and one to Eastern Wyoming College. The year before that, two more were off to college programs—including all-time leading scorer Ali Tripp, who played at Eastern Wyoming as well, graduated this May and is now moving on to the University of Missouri at St. Louis.
On the boys’ side of the basketball court, Southwick brought in Marc Miller, another veteran coach, to try and flip that program. Over several years’ time Miller did just that, again with the assistance of Southwick, guiding the Colts on a magical run in 2023-24 that only ended after a controversial victory by Layton Christian. It elicited a UHSAA investigation into international student-athlete eligibility following the Colts’ loss in the 4A championship game. [Layton Christian is now independent.] Despite that loss, the Colts went undefeated in region play from 2022 to 2024, winning 24 straight games. The top player from that team moved on to college—4A All-First Team selection Chris Cox, who was on a UC San Diego team that played in the NCAA Tournament. Two years earlier, Kirath Makhar went viral for his ballhandling wizardry; he’s just finished up two years at Treasure Valley in Oregon where he was named All-Region in 2025.
As Cottonwood’s AD, Southwick enlisted the help of teachers such as Casey Miller, who guided Cottonwood into its only years as a football independent when the program was nearly extinct. Down to about 30 players on his varsity roster, Miller’s idea of a fair-catch-free-kick went viral after he won at Jordan with it in the final minute. [Miller also sent two kids to college programs despite the program’s size including one to Boise State, and had more than a dozen players named to All-Academic All-Region teams.] Miller’s assistant and alum Donovan Malmrose was then hired as Colts head coach after Miller stepped down.
Soon after that, Malmrose was talking to several CHS alums and old teammates who played in college and the NFL about how to resurrect this program. Together, with assistance from alum and business magnate AJ Jones, a staff of 20 men guided the 85-player Colts to within one game of a state tournament berth in 2024. Malmrose sent two players to college programs during his year in charge [he stepped down due to the birth of a child] and Tai Satuala, who took over the Colts’ head football coaching gig months before Southwick was to begin his final year as Cottonwood’s AD, is bound to increase that total, long after Southwick is gone.
And yet Southwick wasn’t done enacting change. He brought in trainers, a kicking coach, set up camps in several sports, and hired two brothers who played soccer here recently as coaches that have had success in some of the toughest places in Utah to win a game. Southwick also took a longtime assistant coach in several sports and repositioned her as head coach for the Cottonwood softball team, resulting in the Colts’ most wins this season since 2021. He did the same with a mom to several Cottonwood girls’ tennis players and she led a resurgence in that sport.
This unfailing commitment to success was no more illustrated than when he, in his final season in charge, nabbed a guy that for years had been begged by former Cottonwood baseball coaches to join their staffs: Travis Steed. Another longtime teacher at CHS, Steed accepted the Cottonwood head coaching position last summer after Gavin Duckworth stepped down.
Duckworth had some success at CHS, but Steed, as Southwick predicted weeks after the hiring, would transform the program in time. Steed certainly did this spring, guiding the Colts to a 15-10 record in his first year, their best mark since alum Chris Shelton left the program to focus on family matters.
Southwick himself led the Colts to a region title in golf as its head coach, as a matter of fact. He coached both the boys and girls teams through the 2023-24 school year.
In sum, it was a pleasure for this writer to get to know Southwick, who always made sure he was available for interviews—even the tough ones. Those small-town values exemplified who he has always been at his core: a dedicated teacher who cared more about having his coaches educate Cottonwood’s kids through sports’ life lessons, having some success along the way.
