Macon sports icon Barney Hester returns to Tattnall for second run as head football coach

Retirement was going well for Barney Hester, probably better than most expected for somebody so tied to football and high school sports.

He and his wife, Lynn, have traveled, operated their learning center, managed family land in Monticello, played grandparents and gone to games as civilians with less stress than before. They bought an RV and became occasional road warriors.

Then the unpredictability of life cropped up and, teamed with the right timing, Hester is now returning to the place where his coaching career became a legendary one.

Hester is back at Tattnall, as announced Tuesday morning in an email to students, staff and faculty, from Tattnall head of school — and former Tattnall football assistant — Travis Absher.

“THIS JUST IN! Incredibly exciting news at the Square, COACH BARNEY HESTER IS BACK HOME as our new Head Football Coach!” the school posted on social media a little after 8:30 a.m. Tuesday.

Few coaches or players in Middle Georgia history are so tied to a school as Hester is with Tattnall. After all, he spent 31 of his 71 years — 43.7% — on Trojan Trail. Even after surprising the local and GISA community with his resignation back in 2012, then coaching at Howard and becoming the Bibb County public schools athletics director and spending three years away from fields and meetings, “Hester” and “Tattnall” have gone together to football watchers.

Yet so varied has Hester’s career been that he was announced as Tattnall’s new head coach nine days before he makes his debut as a member of the Bibb County Board of Education, which holds its first meeting of the year next Thursday.

He announced 11 months ago that he was running, unopposed, for the District 4 seat, and was sworn in Dec. 19, a little more than two weeks after Tattnall announced that the 2025 Trojans would play in the newly-named Barney Hester Stadium. It was just less than a month after John Abernathy resigned as head coach in late November to focus on his duties as Tattnall’s head of the upper and middle schools, as well as father to a 3-year-old and 1-year-old.

Hester’s public-school board seat made the announcement of his return as a private-school head football coach a surprise, and that was the top topic after Tuesday’s news broke. To Hester, it’s no topic.

First, it’s not any kind of legal issue, since one has nothing to do with the other, but Hester consulted an attorney anyway as part of his due diligence during the process.

He sees concerns as much ado about nothing.

“I’m a pretty level-headed guy,” he said. “Unless you talk to my wife.”

Hester was headmaster at Tattnall for part of his 31-year stint, as well as athletics director. He was AD and head coach at Howard, before becoming Bibb County’s most active athletics director in nearly a decade. Upon retiring from that position, he remained close to the local high school sports scene, public and private, including proudly watching Northeast’s run to the GHSA Class A/Division I state championship game last month.

He and wife Lynn have owned the Northside Prep Learning Center — which serves ages from infants to pre-K with locations on Northside Drive and downtown — for many years.

“I spent 10 years in public schools, and I have a passion for those teachers and those students,” he said. “I made a commitment to serve. There’s no reason to come off. … My thing is I care about all the kids in Bibb County. Private, public, charter. I care about kids.

“There’s room for all of it. I think I can do both.”

Hester’s predecessor knows about wearing hats. Abernathy, a Mount de Sales grad, went 32-24 in five seasons, holding some sort of administrative position for nearly his entire time at Tattnall. He’s currently the head of the upper and middle schools.

Hester was the choice over a number of finalists, according to sources close to the hiring process. Westside head coach Spoon Risper, Tattnall assistants Ted Belflower and Lawrence Kershaw, Southland defensive coordinator and former St. Andrews head coach Kevin Prisant, Edmund Burke head coach Andy Woodard and St. Anne-Pacelli head coach Dwight Jones, among others, were all considered. Former Tattnall athletics director and assistant coach Jeff Ratliff is amid a superb run at Gatewood and was not interested.

The vacancy and candidates had the local grapevine busy, with early reports that it was Risper’s job. But he was told before the Christmas break that he wasn’t the choice. That was about the same time other contenders were told of a decision, and that the announcement would come on Jan. 7, more than two weeks later.

Jones’ name emerged after Christmas, and he appeared to be the choice. But late last week, The Sports Report learned that Jones was in fact not going to be the next coach, and speculation resumed with suddenly no favorite in sight, although one source observed Monday that “now it is Barney in a temporary transitional role.”

Initially, Hester talked with Absher about other coaching candidates, but the list began to dwindle. And all of a sudden, there was a new candidate.

“I had that conversation with him, and he was happy that I was interested,” Hester said. “I was getting pretty excited about the opportunity.”

What about the human resources director of the Hester household, who was no doubt happy when he resigned as the Bibb County athletics director?

“She’s probably the one that talked me into it,” Hester said of his wife Lynn. “That was probably the biggest kicker. I had her support. She wanted it to happen if that’s what I wanted.”

Then, Absher and Hester pulled off an extreme rarity: keeping the move under wraps. People who have known Hester for years as well as those plugged into the local private school football scene as well and even current coaches didn’t have Hester on their radar as a candidate, let alone the choice for the past few weeks.

“My sons in law didn’t know,” he said. “My grandchildren didn’t know. I told my daughters about a week ago. I just recently told them they could tell their husbands, but they couldn’t say anything.”

Absher’s email noted that Hester’s return “will have a tremendous impact not only on the success of our football program but also on the character and growth of our student-athletes. Coach Hester brings a wealth of experience, a commitment to high standards, and a focus on the discipline, development, and personal growth of every player. His proven influence will continue to extend beyond the football field as he mentors and invests in the lives of our young men, helping them become leaders both in competition and in life.”

Hester had an uninspiring record of 7-24 in three seasons at Josey Academy and 9-32-1 in four seasons at Gordon-Ivey at the start of his head coaching career in 1974.

A year at Georgia Southern under Erk Russell followed, and he started at Tattnall as head coach in 1982.

In 31 seasons with the Trojans, he went 306-79-7, with 19 region titles and 11 GISA state championships with only two losing seasons, 4-6-1 in 2004 and 4-8 in 2012, his final season.

The Bibb County high school football world was surprised when he resigned and, after a career in private schools, moved up U.S. Highway 41 to Howard, a fairly new high school with a very much struggling football program that was on an 0-23 run when he took over.

Approved on Jan. 17, 2013, he became Howard’s third head coach in the program’s sixth season, broke the losing streak in his first game en route to an 18-32-1 mark in five seasons, leaving after a 6-5 year that included the program’s first trip to the playoffs.

In 43 seasons as a head coach, Hester has 12 losing seasons. Seven were in his first seven seasons as a head coach at Josey and Gordon-Ivey. His first sub-.500 year at Tattnall came in 2004, year 23 with the program. The Trojans’ 11-1-1 mark in 1984 was the first of 19 seasons with 11 wins or more at Tattnall.

According to the Georgia High School Football Historians Association, Tattnall is 440-190-8 all-time in 54 seasons. Hester has 69.5% of the wins over 57.4% of the seasons.

Had Hester not made a promise to a longtime friend a few years into his Howard career, who knows what the situation might be?

“Bottom line is I would not have gotten out of coaching at Howard,” he said. “I was enjoying it at Howard.”

Eddie Ashley was a Macon sports lifer as a coach and game official who was the Bibb County athletics director on a not-quite-full-time basis. He told Hester that he would be retiring in a year or two, and wanted Hester to be his successor.

Hester told Ashley he was loving life at Howard, and the program was making legitimate progress and had up-and-coming talent. Ashley’s decision to retire came earlier than Hester expected.

“I figured we probably would change it,” he said. “But we didn’t. I figured Eddie would stay on longer, that I could talk him into staying a little bit longer, but I couldn’t.

“I wish I had. I think he’d still be alive if I had.”

The Lanier High grad died in November of 2020 from COVID-19 complications at the age of 72, two-plus years after Hester fulfilled that promise. Hester retired from that position at the end of 2021, a little more than a year after Ashley’s passing, and embraced retirement.

“We stayed busy,” he said. “We did a lot of traveling. We were gone most of the time.”

The agenda ranged from Georgia football games — home and away — to Alaska, from the Mediterranean to Georgia beaches. Hester stayed physically sharp by, among other things, working on the 50 acres of property in Monticello belonging to his wife and her family.

The itch remained, though it wasn’t necessarily a bothersome itch, what with a business, not to mention six grandchildren and two more on the way.

“The timing was right,” said Hester, whose phone heated up with more than 100 communications in short order on Tuesday. “Bottom line, I’ve been a football coach all my life, pretty much. I missed that part. I missed the interaction with the players, with the parents, and the support people, and, you know, the Friday nights.”

The Trojans are looking for their first trip to a state championship game since the 2011 GISA Class AAA title. The poster child for stability at Tattnall is expected to restore some to a program that has battled stability issues — in football as well as athletics administration — since his departure.

Clint Morgan went 22-11 in three seasons and was forced out. Then Chance Jones went 30-15 in four seasons and was forced out. Abernathy was only a few seasons into his full-time coaching career when he was hired. With five seasons, he is second on the tenure list at Tattnall, 26 seasons behind Hester.

Hester doesn’t look or sound much different than when he departed the sidelines at Tattnall or Howard, and the game plan for Tattnall in 2025 is no different than the one that worked pretty well for most of 31 seasons.

“I’m smarter than I was,” said the Dublin native who grew up a few long passes from East Laurens High. “Fundamentals are blocking and tackling. We’re gonna learn fundamentals. You win games by outworking people, being stronger than people. Your scheme is your scheme. Your scheme is important, but not nearly as important as all the other stuff.”

The Erk Russell advice he took when he started at Tattnall in 1982 will be back in place when he restarts at Tattnall in 2025.

“I went down there, I thought I knew everything,” he said of the year with Russell and GSU. “You have a play for this, you have a play for that, you have a different set and all that.

“Coach taught me that you take four or five good running plays and you out-execute everybody. That’s what we did. … We learned how to block and tackle, we got stronger in the weight room, we had mental toughness.

“We went out on the field and we expected to win.”