Bay Area high school football: Liberty coach resigns after two seasons
Liberty football coach Matt Hoefs has resigned after just two seasons at the Bay Valley Athletic League school. Hoefs turned in his resignation Friday after meeting with principal Efa Huckaby and athletic director Andrew Lonsdale.
“I could tell they were having some thoughts about moving on,” Hoefs said Monday. “There was not a lot of support from the district. I didn’t think I would be back. I felt like they wanted to go in a different direction.”
Lonsdale on Monday said he couldn’t comment. The school was closed for Martin Luther King Day. The AD said he would be willing to discuss the coaching situation on Tuesday.
Hoefs, who was the head coach at Dublin High in 2017-18 before joining Ryan Partridge’s staff in 2019, was 9-6 in his two years with the Lions, including 5-5 last season.
The popular coach, who has children aged 1- and 5-years old, said spending more time with his kids was also a factor.
“Spending time with my family superseded it,” Hoefs said of coaching. “I was only getting to spend moments with them. Last week when we started the (winter) weight program, I felt like it was time. When I left the principal’s office, I felt disappointed and relieved.”
But there were some issues with the school’s administration that prompted him to leave now rather than wait a year or two. Hoefs said he was “hopefully planning for another year or two” at Liberty. The Lions have some good talent returning. The schedule is all but done, with only one non-league game still in doubt.
“It’s been a tough year and a half,” Hoefs said.
The direction Liberty takes in football will be interesting. During Partridge’s tenure, the Lions were 34-5, captured a state championship in 2018 and won at least 10 games in each of his three seasons. It became a destination school for many of Contra Costa County’s best players.
But Partridge, who is now the wide receivers coach at Massachusetts, did not have a pandemic to deal with.
Hoefs doesn’t know if he will return to coaching high school football. He said he already has received a couple of calls, but he lives close to Liberty and doesn’t want to commute.