By Garth Shanklin
Sports Editor

The Batavia Bulldogs’ football team will be the fourth Clermont County school to begin the 2017-2018 season with a new football coach at the helm after the resignation of Matt Lester on Friday, Jan. 13

Lester said the decision to step down was not based on football, instead it was a choice made to give him more time with his family.

“It was a life decision more than it was a football decision,” he said. “I’ve been head football coach, more or less, since I graduated college. I was the youngest coach in the state two years in a row. With that, I think that the time and the wear and tear on yourself and the time that you lose with family and that type of thing, I realized how precious that was. After this season, I decided that I wanted to spend a little bit more time with my family and my wife rather than being a head coach.”

Batavia Athletic Director Ben Stewart thanked Lester for his performance at the helm of the Bulldogs in an emailed statement.
“Coach Lester did a fantastic job leading our program for the past three years and I have been very proud of our team on and off the field under his leadership,” Stewart said. “Matt is a good man and a good friend, I want to thank him for his time and dedication to Batavia Football and our kids. Mr. Lester will remain a teacher at Batavia High School.”

The Bulldogs finished the 2016 campaign 3-7, with two of the team’s wins coming in the final two weeks of the season. Batavia defeated Portsmouth West 10-7 on a late field goal in week nine, then turned around and blew out Williamsburg on the road in a 33-9 victory to end the season. Lester said those wins helped prove that the team’s coaching methods were working.

“For me, that was the icing on the cake of my tenure,” he said. “It was a really special way to go out. It’s promising for the future, it gives a little bit of validity and shows that what we were doing was working. Whoever is the next head coach will have a good base established for success in the future. I’m proud to say I was a part of that.”

Lester took over the team in 2014 from first-year head coach Caleb Corrill, who was forced to resign after just two games due to health concerns. Batavia started the 2014 campaign 2-3, but rallied in a big way after the halfway point.

“The whole 2014 season was a blur,” Lester said. “Being able to finish 5-0 was probably the biggest accomplishment we had. Beating Portsmouth West this year on a last-second field goal, beating my alma mater on senior night, that’s about the most special win I had as a coach. Beating Williamsburg the last game of the season in the fashion that we did was cool.”

In addition to the on-field results, Lester said one of the other aspects of the program he was proud to have made an impact on was the school’s reputation on the gridiron.

“The group of kids I’ve had have really done a good job turning around the reputation of Batavia High School football,” he said. “When I got there, we were coming off a season where we had a reputation for having personal fouls, and last year and the year before that it hasn’t been an issue. We were getting compliments from refs about how we played the game. That’s probably the coolest thing we’ve done.”

Stewart named assistant head coach Scott Donaldson as the interim coach and called upon the Batavia community to help aid the school in the search for the next head coach.

“We are posting the position of HFC on [Jan.16] internally and the following week externally,” Stewart said. “We are looking for an experienced candidate who can continue to build our program and develop our student athletes into leaders in the classroom and on the field. Assistant football coach Scott Donaldson has been named the interim head coach and will immediately take over our weight room training program. We have great kids at Batavia, many who are good leaders. We are counting on them to work together as we find our next football coach.”

The Batavia Bulldogs’ football team will host Williamsburg in their 2017 season opener on Friday, Aug. 25 at 7 p.m.