By BAKER ELLIS / Sports Editor

VINCENT – Former Calera High School head football coach Wiley McKeller will be the man in charge of leading the rebuilding effort at Vincent High School, pending Shelby County Board of Education approval in January.

“Vincent High School is a tremendous opportunity for a football coach,” McKeller wrote in a statement. “They are a top rated school in a tradition-rich community. I am very excited about working with the school leaders, the students and the community to make Vincent HS the best football program in Shelby County.”

McKeller went 39-17 in his five years as the head coach at 5A Calera, good for a career wining percentage of 70 percent, and was known for having a high-powered offense during his time there. He tendered his resignation earlier this month at Calera. To understand why he willingly stepped down from that post to, pending Board of Education approval, be hired as the head coach at 2A Vincent, which went 0-10 this season and has not won a game since October of 2014, you first have to first understand more about the man himself.

McKeller grew up in Texas with a high school football coach for a father. He played quarterback at Lamar University in Beaumont, Texas, before turning his attention to coaching. He always knew he wanted to coach, he said, in part because he had never known anything else. At the age of 31, he was the offensive coordinator for one of the largest high schools in the whole state, Port Neches-Grove.

“The thing that made that so cool was it was just lined out,” McKeller said. “It was just really insane. “It was a really good place, big tradition. It was really neat stuff, just a whole different level.”

High school football in Texas is a different animal entirely than it is here, McKeller said. He was the offensive coordinator at what is now a Texas 5A school with an enrollment of more than 1,400 students at the age of 31 and had the coaching world as his oyster. Had McKeller stayed the course, he most likely would have continued to move up the coaching ranks in the plus-sized Texas football landscape, but a few factors led McKeller to reprioritize his life and consider looking to coach elsewhere.

First was the birth of his twins, Brooks and Kate, now 11. McKeller’s wife is from Alabama and has family in the Birmingham area, and with the birth of their children began to consider moving closer to her family. Then came Hurricane Rita. Rita, which ripped through southeast Texas in September of 2005, ended a promising 5-0 season for PNG and McKeller’s offense, which at the time was tops in the Houston area. At that point, he said, he knew it was time for a change.

“My priorities shifted when my kids came,” McKeller said. “I stopped caring so much about getting the biggest job or anything like that. And then when Rita came, it was like a sign. It was time to go.”

McKeller landed at Childersburg in 2006 as the offensive coordinator, where he stayed until moving to Calera in 2009 to accept the offensive coordinator job there. He was promoted to head coach in 2011 after former Calera head coach Scott Martin resigned from the job.

In 2013 and 2014, Calera led the state in regular season scoring offense with 50.1 and 45.3 points per game averages, per McKeller. In 2015, Calera won fewer games and lost more than it had since McKeller’s first season as head coach in 2011 and finished 7-4 with a first round playoff appearance.

When he heard that former Vincent head coach Jason Hill was not going to be returning as the head coach for the Yellow Jackets, he said something inside of him told him to inquire about the job. After meeting with Vincent principal Dr. Michelle Edwards, as well as athletic director and boys’ basketball coach John Hadder and other administrators, McKeller said he knew he wanted to make the switch.

“The thing I want people to know is, I’m a county school system employee, I’m a county school system guy,” McKeller added. “Vincent is a great school. They have a tremendous administrator, they have tremendous coaches, and they’ve got tremendous teachers. That community revolves around that school, they love that school. Why wouldn’t you want to be involved with that?”

McKeller is not leaving Calera on bad terms, either. Joel Dixon has been the principal at Calera since 2014, and ironically enough before that was the principal at Vincent for two years. He spoke to the influence McKeller has had on Calera in his time there.

“I really can’t say enough good things about the positive impact Coach McKeller has had on our school,” Dixon wrote in a statement to the Shelby County Reporter. “He brings a calm enthusiasm to everything he touches and goes above and beyond when it comes to helping his student athletes better themselves. On a personal and professional level, I greatly appreciate what Coach McKeller has done for Calera High School and look forward to seeing the positive impact he’ll have at Vincent High School.”

Dixon also said he would like to have a new head coach in place, “the sooner the better,” after Christmas break, as long as the person is the right fit for the job.

At the end of the day, the biggest allure for taking the new job, McKeller said, was two-fold. On one hand, the prospect of building something from the ground up was appealing.

“Ultimately, at any other school I would be judged against and compared to whatever had done in the past,” McKeller said. “Rarely do you get a chance to go in as a coach at ground zero and build something from the ground up.”

On the other, McKeller has in essence been granted autonomy to do with the team and facilities whatever he sees fit.

“That’s basically what has been conveyed to me is, ‘That weight room? Do what you want to do with it. That locker room? Do what you want to with it. These field house plans? Do what you want to with them,’” he added. “When you add the variables about what Vincent is, and have that chance? That’s special. Imagination and elbow grease is going to have to fix a lot of it, but I get to make those calls.”

Vincent High School may not be the school where McKeller saw himself ending up when he was a hot-shot offensive coordinator in Texas 10-plus years ago. However, this is not regression career-wise for the 43-year-old. He is excited to help turn around the program at a great school that has fantastic community support, and Vincent is excited to have him. Time will tell what he is able to do at Vincent, but if history plays a role, the Yellow Jackets landed a winner who can help take the Vincent football program to new heights.