Slow Motion Replay: Kevin Wallace says the 2025 season will be his final tour around the KHSAA @CoachKWallace, @bigassfans, @minguabeefjerky, @khsaafootball, @KyHighFootball, @BGHSPurplesNews, @StXTigersFB, @PurplesFootball

Wallace took ‘middle of the road’ kids and made them stars

🎶Go rest high on that mountain/
Son, your work [in KHSAA football] is done...🎶
Vince Gill, 1994

Kevin Wallace will coach his 40th season in 2025. Afterward, according to him, he will hang up his whistle. What a run it has been for the coach whose present record, entering his final season, is 361-126 with six (6) titles. Wallace started his career at his alma mater, Warren East, as an assistant in 1982. He will end his career as the HFC of one of Kentucky’s more storied, prep, football programs in Kentucky 6A, St. Xavier High. Kevin Wallace is “one of a kind” and “his kind” did for 40 years what “his kind” does…win games and championships.

HB Lyon, Scouting Director, “KPGFootball”

Louisville/Bowling Green, KY: Wallace claims he is “hanging it up” after this coming season (2025) and moving back home with his wife, Dana. Home will soon be a return to Bowling Green. Home, presently is as the HFC at one of Kentucky’s premier 6A programs, is Louisville.

Wallace played football at Warren East in Bowling Green, Kentucky. Wallace started his coaching journey there, in 1982, as an assistant and was promoted to head football coach (HFC) in 1984.

Wallace would post a 45-61 record, in 10-seasons, at his alma mater before taking the “job of a career” at a “destination school,” a.k.a. Bowling Green (Senior) High. As a Raider alum (Warren East), this was not an easy move. However, there aren’t a ton of high school coaches who are turning down Bowling Green Senior High.

It was as the HFC of the “Purples” that Wallace started to make a name for himself among the commonwealth’s very elite coaches. Wallace joined the staff at BGHS, as an assistant in 1994, and was promoted to HFC in 1996.

In 22-seasons at the helm of the Purples, Wallace went 254-41 and won Class 5A state titles in 2011, 2012, 2013, 2015 and 2016. His teams were state runners-up, three straight seasons, from 2005-07.

Wallace was called to Louisville to return the St. Xavier Tigers football program to its earlier prominence in the Louisville and Class 6A classification. Like being offered a job at Bowling Green Senior High, there aren’t many stonewalling a phone call from Louisville’s St. Xavier either.

Wallace has posted a 62-24 record at St. Xavier entering his final season. His ’21 team won the 6A title, finishing 14-1.

Wallace’s sixth (6th) overall championship was St. Xavier’s first football title since it won over Louisville Trinity, 34-10, in 2009. All-timer, Mike Glaser (336-78, 7-4 in title games) was taming the Tigers in those days as the program’s legendary HFC.

Some programs never enjoy a single legend at the controls. St. Xavier gets multiple bites at that apple. Lucky them, as the pundits exclaim.

When interviewed by Jason Frakes, with the commonwealth’s largest, circulated newspaper, The Louisville Courier-Journal, Wallace told Frakes, “It’s about time to go back [to Bowling Green]. I don’t know what I’ll do with my time. I don’t know what will grab me.”

Wallace continued on in the Frakes interview, “Nothing’s going to replace the relationship part, the competitive part. All of that will be new to me because this is all I’ve ever known. I’m at the age now where I kind of want to see what it’s like to go where I want to go on a weekend or not have to take every vacation on spring break or during the dead period.”

We talk all the time about a coach’s responsibility to mold or develop talent. This is especially true of the high school game where “Jimmies and Joes” are few and far between and the “X’s and the O’s” really make quite a bit of difference.

We have often said the St. Xavier roster sounds more like a New York, Italian law firm than a top-flight football factory. St. Xavier’s President of its very exclusive college preparatory school is Paul Colistra. Point made!

However, that aside, St. Xavier is in the title mix, year in and year out. How can this be, you ask?

“We have to build the middle-of-the-road players into good high school players,” Wallace told the Courier-Journal’s Jason Frakes. “That’s going to be the key to our development. We do have some high-level kids, but it’s an 11-man effort every snap. It’s the job of our staff to take those other guys to a place they’re not at right now.” Emphasis added.

That is the rub, isn’t it? Making high level kids out of kids who began the journey in the middle of the road. Building “11-men efforts” occurring each and every snap. Getting the middle of the road guys to another level and doing it consistently over a four-decade period of time.

That is what equates to greatness. That is what nets six (6) KHSAA titles and nine (9) overall trips to the KHSAA title game. That is what makes one among the “greatest to have ever coached a game.”

Inherently true is the fact Kevin Wallace routinely took middle of the road talent to the highest levels. Equally true is the fact Wallace took some middle of the road kid, out of Warren East High School, to the highest coaching levels this commonwealth has ever before either known or seen.

Well done, man! Now, go rest high on that mountain. It appears your work here may be done.

This is Friday Night Fletch, reporting for KPGFootball, reminding you to PLAY THROUGH THE WHISTLE!

If you enjoyed this article and wish to gain full-access to the site, then subscribe monthly to Kentucky Prep Gridiron by following the prompts!

© The information contained on this site is the copyrighted intellectual property of KPGFootball. Any unauthorized dissemination of this material without the author’s express written consent is strictly prohibited!