Mason County football coach Jonathan Thomas resigned from the position on Wednesday after coaching the past six seasons. (Evan Dennison, The Ledger Independent)
HIGH SCHOOL FOOTBALL
With numbers in the program at a high during his six-year tenure, a son in the program approaching his sophomore year and promise for the future, the decision Jonathan Thomas had to make surely wasn’t an easy one for his future and that of the Mason County football program.
But it was a decision that Thomas said he couldn’t pass up as he resigned as head coach on Wednesday and will be taking over as the Director of Transportation for the Mason County School District beginning the 2021-22 school year.
“It definitely weighed heavy on my heart. I feel it was a decision best for my family and couldn’t turn it down. If I waited to take it that job wouldn’t be there a couple of years down the road,” Thomas said. “If anybody knows me and my goal, it was to hang in long enough to be able to coach your son. You have a plan and a goal and now it’s just a different plan and a different goal. It was a tough decision for family and tough decision for me and him. It wasn’t easy, it’s still not easy right now. It tugged at me for a while. This job will take up a lot of my time, you never say never, but with head coaching I couldn’t do both.”
Thomas coached the Royals the last six seasons and while challenges presented themselves over the years, Thomas and his staff stayed the course to get where they are today. The Royals have over 60 players in the program right now, a far cry from the days they were struggling to even get 30 in pads by season’s end. Around 30 players wasn’t ideal for a program that moved up to 4A, facing depth issues and teams that had their picking of 50-plus players.
They battled through, got realigned to 3A and went 10-9 over the last two seasons. They return 49 of the 53 players from the KHSAA roster at the end of last season and it’s a winnable district if they can find a way to beat their nemesis Fleming County, something they’ve been unable to do since 2013. District titles can become an annual thing
“To me the biggest thing is leaving it better than I found it. You can’t measure this job on in wins and losses, if that’s all you worry about, you’re missing the boat. The biggest thing I’ll take away is getting these kids to stand for something, doing something together. The amount of adversity our kids had to overcome and still be standing, that’s what life is every single day,” Thomas said. “I’ve come in contact with some really good people, some of my best friends growing up are people that I’ve played football with. Football has done a lot for me personally in some shape or form since 1996. The last thing I wanted to let the kids know when I told them yesterday was that I gave them every single thing that I had.”
The groundwork has been laid and it was something Thomas has envisioned for years since taking over after being an assistant on staff since 2003.
“Credit to the staff and assistant coaches and credit the kids to get their buddies to go out and play and seeing what we are able to go and seeing the vision of what we can accomplish,” Thomas said.
Thomas led the Royals to a 24-37 record in his six seasons as head man, getting their first playoff win since 2013 in the 2019 season. The Royals finished runner-up in the district in the regular season the past two years, their season cut short in the playoffs this past year due to COVID protocols.
The Athletic Department will be looking for a new coach immediately.
“We thought Coach Thomas did a great job with what he walked into. He started with a limited amount of talent, faced a bear of a schedule, we moved up to 4A…it’s a tough situation for any coach, especially someone in their first year,” Mason County co-Athletic Director Chris Ullery said.
Assistant Dean Ravencraft will be the interim for the time being. Coaching searches have been a rarity on the gridiron in Maysville, they’ve had just two head coaches since 1996, David Buchanan from 1996-2014 and Thomas from 2015-20.
“We’ll take applicants over the next 30 days or so, it’s already been advertised on ListServ and on the KHSAA website,” Ullery said. “First things we’ll look for is the coach to be inside the walls of our high school. From there it’s about the right fit, we want a guy with experience in connecting relationships with our kids. From there we want someone to take the next steps and reach out and extend our football program into our community.”
