In 1996, Kevin Wallace wasn’t supposed to be the successor to Bowling Green’s most successful coach. Dan Haley had just left fresh off the school’s first state championship after coaching 12 seasons and had been the first Purples football coach to win more than 100 games.

Steve Long was hired to replace Haley but never coached a game. Enter Wallace, then an assistant coach who initially took the job as an interim in the transition of eras.

“I didn’t think I’d have a job at the end of the season,” Wallace said. “I took the job as an interim head coach in the middle of a good deal of controversy and not a whole lot of people with a lot of confidence that I would be able to get a job done.”

Instead, Wallace built Bowling Green into a dynasty.

For 22 seasons, Wallace accumulated 254 wins and a run of five state championships since 2011. On Monday, Wallace decided two decades was enough.

The coach who has never lived outside Bowling Green will take a new position in Louisville as head coach of St. Xavier High School, a private Catholic school that consistently competes with Trinity as one of the premier Class 6A programs in Kentucky.

Wallace met with the Bowling Green football team Monday afternoon to inform them of his resignation, and a news conference to introduce him as the Tigers’ 19th football coach is scheduled for Tuesday afternoon at St. Xavier.

“Twenty-two years of establishing relationships and making friendships, things like that go far beyond the wins and losses and championships,” Wallace said. “I’m indebted to so many people that are associated with Bowling Green High School and how they’ve supported our program and how they’ve supported me.”

Wallace leaves Bowling Green with 299 career wins between coaching the Purples and his alma mater, Warren East, over a 32-year span. He’ll enter 2018 with the 11th most career wins of any coach in Kentucky.

Never did he imagine when taking over in 1996 that he’d build a Purples dynasty spanning over two decades. Neither did Bowling Green Independent School District Superintendent Gary Fields, who came from Union County in 1996 to join Wallace’s staff as an assistant coach for three years.

Fields and BGHS Principal Will King are now tasked with putting together a committee to find Bowling Green’s next football coach.

“For the school and the district, it’s been 22 years of great leadership of young men and consistency of how the program has been run as far as with class and he’s done a great job of transitioning a school where we didn’t have the numbers that maybe big programs do and we now have maybe 100 players,” Fields said. “We have a tradition now where seniors will stick with the program and wait for their opportunity. Kevin has done a good job of building a culture where kids want to be a part of it.”

Two of those players earned the top honor of any football player in the state. Nacarius Fant and Jamale Carothers were named Kentucky Mr. Football in 2013 and 2016, respectively, and were key figures in the Purples’ recent run of championships.

When news of Wallace’s transition to St. X made its way through social media Monday afternoon, Fant said he couldn’t have been more thrilled for his former coach.

“He’s done everything I feel like he’s needed to do at Bowling Green High School as far as championships and helping the program get the wins and building the success,” Fant said. “It’s going to be a challenge for him going to St. X and he’s going to have to embrace that and I think he is.”

Fant went on to play wide receiver for four seasons at Western Kentucky and kept a close relationship with his coach working a few miles down the road. Fant remembers transitioning from a quarterback in middle school to a receiver his freshman year at BGHS because Wallace saw potential in getting him on the field early.

As a result, Fant holds every single-game, single-season and career receiving record at BGHS and ranks in the top 20 in eight individual categories in the KHSAA record books. Fant gives a lot of credit to Wallace’s offensive mind helping him transition into ex-Hilltopper coach Jeff Brohm’s similar system at WKU.

“If you were to go in an offensive film room meeting … he’s going to break that down as it’s a college system already built into you,” Fant said. “That’s what I think has helped me over the last couple of years coming in and learning quick in college film rooms. … If you ask Brohm, I was a quick learner and came in quick and I think Coach Wallace and the coaches helped me out with that.”

Carothers, a freshman at the U.S. Naval Academy, was another explosive player in Wallace’s offense. The 2016 Class 5A championship game MVP and Mr. Football is the Purples’ all-time scorer and leading rusher.

Carothers said even for former players who leave Bowling Green, the relationship with Wallace continues to stay strong.

“I wouldn’t want to play for any other high school coach than Coach Wallace,” Carothers said. “He demands the most out of you and loves you at the same time. He knew if he got the best out of you he could have the best team that he wanted. To be the head coach at Bowling Green for (22) years, he’s a part of six state championships, whoever is coming after him has big shoes to fill.”

Casey Tinius was a kicker for Wallace for the 2003-06 teams that laid the groundwork for the dynasty to come. Bowling Green was a 3A runner-up in 2005 and 2006, then again after Tinius left in 2007.

Tinius said Wallace was the same coach in the early 2000s that he is today.

“It was a unique situation for me playing soccer as well because he really worked well with that and wanted me to perform well on the football field and the soccer field,” Tinius said. “There was something about him that he was great at getting the best out of his players when their best was needed. I think that really showed on Friday nights at El Donaldson Stadium. He was great about getting the best out of his players in big games and that’s evident by the success he’s had when he was still there.”

Shortly after meeting with players Monday, Wallace said the run at Bowling Green won’t end just because he’s leaving.

“I think there are competitive athletes here and everything you need to have an outstanding football program exists here at Bowling Green High,” Wallace said. “That didn’t just change today, it doesn’t change with me leaving. Those things can still be accomplished and still will be accomplished.

“For me, it’s just I’ve jumped from coaching in maybe the Big Ten West to go into the SEC West. I don’t know if that’s the best way to put it or not. The SEC West is the best part of college football. Like it or not, I’m going to see what I can try to accomplish from a professional standpoint and from a personal standpoint, do the same things I’ve done at Bowling Green, try to build relationships and help young men grow and try to cultivate a group of coaches and pull everybody together and row in the same direction.”{&end}