Mark Sanborn has been named varsity football coach at Hopkinton High School, athletic director Rich Cormier announced Thursday.

He replaces Dan MacLean, who stepped down after guiding the Hillers for two seasons. This past year the Hillers went 2-3 in the “Fall 2″ season, which was played in March and April.

Sanborn, a wellness teacher at the high school, said he is looking to establish his imprint on the program immediately. He’ll need to move quickly, with practices starting in a few short weeks.

“I think the big thing moving forward will be just to establish a strong culture where kids are disciplined and have a really good attitude and work hard,” he said. “I feel like I am able to connect with players really well; I’m at the school all the time. I’m looking forward to laying that foundation and getting that process going with the culture, and then success will come from there once we’re able to build that culture and establish those important values like attitude and effort and discipline and just being a good teammate.”

The 31-year-old Sanborn was an assistant coach for the Hillers varsity the past three years, coaching special teams and wide receivers, as well as serving as head junior varsity coach. He was head freshman coach for three years before that.

He also has head coaching experience with the HHS junior varsity baseball team and the Hopkinton Middle School boys basketball team.

Sanborn grew up in town and was a three-sport standout (football, basketball and baseball) at the high school. He went on to play baseball at UMass-Lowell from 2009-12.

After briefly working in the business world following college, Sanborn started volunteering at HHS and was bitten by the coaching bug.

“I never thought when I was playing that I would go into the coaching world,” he said. “When I got out of college and I was looking for what path I wanted to do, not really liking the business aspect of my career, I got an opportunity to volunteer in Hopkinton and I just fell in love with it immediately. I got hooked, and I’ve loved every moment of teaching and coaching since then.”