[pirateforlife]

Some very important names to the immediate future of Belfry athletics are underlined on those rosters above.

Since my kids were born and since my nephew went to High School I haven't stayed plugged in with Belfry football even a quarter of what I used to. For the additional Belfry sports, I haven't really plugged in at all.

I will say I was very shocked to see the same HC for both basketball and baseball. That is not common. Sometimes when you have a legendary coach in one specific sport, it may not be a stretch to see him/her do double duty at a small school (Bill Mike Runyon at Paintsville as an example), but with the shall we say "limited" success Belfry has enjoyed in those two sports over the past decade plus, seeing the same HC was very surprising to me to say the least.

I won't pretend to know what is going on, but I will say this...
As legendary as Coach Haywood is... it took lots of forward thinking, big changes, and a plan to evolve the Belfry program to where it went from a very good program to a Championship powerhouse during the 2000's until now.

Belfry upgraded their facilities, overhauled their youth football programs, put a bigger focus on speed training, joined the KYMSFA and started competing against statewide competition instead of regional competition, they significantly upgraded their Varsity schedule and challenged themselves, and more importantly set their target goals at a much loftier trajectory. Despite all that, it may even require more evolution for the football program to stay at that level as other programs have caught or even passed them (Pikeville).

I don't fault the football program, instead I sing their praises as they continue to work hard and seek improvement, but I am not sure if the same initiative has been shared for any other athletics program the past couple decades. Seems to be a whole lot of stagnation. Heck, Belfry even had a couple strong programs.. their Girl's BB and Volleyball programs both were winning the region routinely at the start of the 2000's... even those programs seem to be a shell of what they once were.

Bill Mike is a much better option than the one that is currently running the clown show at bhs
you have a ferrari football program and a 2005 ford focus athletic department, and the focus is screwing the ferrari now. i think jenkins even has different coaches for the 3 big boys sports.............

Anyone think I’m crazy to think what happened to Prestonsburg football and their downfall is happening right now with Belfry? Very similar situations. Kids left there to Paintsville due to similar scenarios. Not saying it’s happening but this is how it happened with Prestonsburg and they haven’t been the same since. Now they struggle beating Betsy Layne and Magoffin and got crushed by Pike Central last time they played.