SIDNEY — Sidney High head baseball coach Bill Shoffner announced his resignation from that post recently, saying he was “ready to be a dad.”
Shoffner, a familiar figure in the coaching ranks for a long while now, with stops also at Lehman, Riverside and Fairlawn, returned to his alma mater to coach the Yellow Jackets three seasons ago. His first team finished with an 11-15 mark, and the last two were both 8-18.
“At the end of the season, looking back, what needs to be done to turn things around, I wasn’t sure I could spend all the time I needed to,” said Shoffner Monday. “I think the next coach needs to be more visible at the little league level, hold camps,… and frankly, when I have time off, I like to spend it with my family. I think it would have been an injustice, and we would have just been spinning our wheels.”
Shoffner’s wife was scheduled to give birth to the couple’s second child on Tuesday. They also have a two-year-old son, and Shoffner has a 14-year-old daughter.
“Once (the baby) gets a little older, I’m sure I’ll get back in coaching,” he said. “And my older daughter is participating in some things, so I’m ready to be a dad. This would have been my 15th year of being a head coach, and in half of them I coached multiple sports.”
He finds it tough to walk away.
“I think the main thing I’ll look back on is we really pushed hard for three years,” he said. “And next spring, there will be a junior high program and I think that will ultimately help the numbers. Having a junior high program may be the best thing that’s ever happened to the program.
“We renovated the field and I think it’s one of the top fields in the GWOC North,” he added. “It’s tough to step down, but I still love Sidney and will support them.”
Sidney athletic director Mitch Hoying, himself a former head baseball coach at the school, said Shoffner’s resignation was unexpected.
“It came as a bit of a surprise,” he said. “Billy has a good reputation and did a good job with the program, so we’re sad to see him go. But coaching sports is difficult, and when someone decided that there are other things more important, you always respect that.”
He said the school will open up the job and see if there is interest from within the school system. And he expects there will be.
“There are definitely some good internal candidates,” Hoying said. “Then we will go external and see if there are candidates wanting to come to Sidney. I think we’ll attract some good people, and we’re going to find the right person.”
