Bald Eagle Area boys’ basketball coach Bill Butterworth stepping down after 22 seasons
The Bald Eagle Area boys’ basketball team will take the court next season with a new head coach for the first time in over two decades.
Head coach Bill Butterworth handed in his letter of resignation Wednesday and will step down as the team’s head coach. Butterworth led the Eagles for 22 seasons as the head coach and was involved with the program in some capacity for 30 seasons. He’s the school’s all-time leader in wins as a head coach and has coached four players to score at least 1,000 points in his career.
Butterworth told the Centre Daily Times he’d been thinking about walking away from his post for about two years.
“I’ve been kicking it around,” Butterworth said. “Earlier this year I thought about sticking around for two more years because I really like this group of kids. We’d even been talking about next season for the past couple weeks.”
The veteran head coach said his day job as a plant manager made him reconsider and added stress that made it difficult to put all of his effort into coaching.
“I just sat down with my wife the other day and said I think it’s time,” he said. “I’m stressed, I’m tired, and I’m not giving the kids everything because my mind isn’t there.”
Butterworth is hopeful the next coach will have plenty to work with and said he’s not leaving the cupboard bare thanks to the talent in the sophomore and junior classes that will return next season.
The Eagles are 5-15 so far this season and are led by senior guard Jaden Jones, who is one of Butterworth’s four 1,000-points scorers. Jones said he’s grateful that he had the chance to be a part of Butterworth’s final senior class.
“He was the only coach that had trust in me as a ninth grader to play varsity,” Jones said. “He was the coach that gave me a shot at that age. Then (that belief) carries and it builds to where we are now. You couldn’t ask for a better coach.”
The head coach is grateful for the amount of time Bald Eagle gave him to lead the program, and said it was hard for him to hand in the resignation letter.
“It’s been 30 years,” he said. “You start seeing kids of kids that you coach and you realize you were here for a long time,” he said. “We did some great things. It was the toughest decision I’ve ever made. I was more nervous than I was when I asked my wife to marry me.”
Butterworth reflected on his experience with fondness. He spoke with pride about his former players and their academic achievements, as well as the people he’s helped them become over the last several decades.
It was the players who kept pulling Butterworth back into coaching, but he decided that now was the time to hang it up so an extra two years didn’t turn into an extra four years.
“It’s been an experience,” he said. “I’ve had a lot of good times here and the good times way outweigh the bad times. I just felt like it was time.”
This story was originally published February 5, 2020 at 9:25 PM.
