The Bayshore Christian Eagles are set to take the gridiron in 2024 after Eagle Athletic Director Jeff Hauge introduced Phil Lazenby as the leader of Baldwin County’s newest high school football program last week.

Hauge said he had been thinking about adding a football program for about five years but the process was accelerated a couple of years ago when he received a letter from a middle schooler at Bayshore Christian.

“One of the things that spurred on this decision as well is that I got a wonderful letter from a fifth or sixth grade student that just talked about how he wanted football at Bayshore,” Hauge said Monday. “He was willing to cut grass, raise money and do whatever it took to get it going. Whenever you have that it really causes you to dig deep and say, ‘You know what, these students at Bayshore want this and they want it bad.’”

So the athletic director finished his research alongside groups of administrators and fathers before he went out and hired Lazenby, the former Bayside Academy coach who won his 200th game last season and was inducted into the Alabama High School Sports Hall of Fame in 2019.

“Building a program from scratch, which is what Coach Laz is going to be doing, I’ve always thought that it's a tough job. But it takes a tough man to do that job and he is the perfect man to get us going,” Hauge said of Lazenby.

After he stepped down as the Admirals’ head coach in December, Lazenby said he wasn’t done coaching yet and received contact from Hauge the following day. After he made a visit to the school and saw the caliber coaches and athletes they had on campus, Lazenby was convinced Bayshore Christian was his next step despite the challenges associated with a brand-new program.

“It's a lot of things that we have to do, but it's going to be a labor of love. I really do believe that,” Lazenby said Monday. “I'm not guaranteeing anything, because I can't, but I think that the type of kids and parents we have there and the type of leadership in the school, I think that we can be successful. Now, I'm not saying in the first year, I'm not saying second year, I'm not even saying the third. But I'm saying the school can be successful in this football program.”

With June 1 serving as Lazenby’s first day on the job, he said some of the first steps the Eagles will take as a football program will be toward the gym.

“It will start off in the weight room,” Lazenby said of where the program’s construction will begin. “Strength and conditioning is very big and Coach Hauge is going to help me with that as well.”

However, Hauge acknowledged that the speed at which they continue may need to be monitored with some of the players learning the sport altogether.

“We're looking at the fall of 2024 for starting this football program,” Hauge said. “There are several steps that we have to take before we even get to the football field, we're going to have to teach our kids the basics of the game. Football has a language of its own and we're going to have to teach these students at Bayshore how to understand that language.”

While Lazenby sees the school’s smaller enrollment as one of the biggest challenges, the quality of the student-athletes there is one of the things that will certainly help the progression.

“These are very smart kids, most of them are wanting to go to school and wanting to go to college. I think they enjoy their teachers and their coaches,” Lazenby said. “I've watched them play baseball. I've seen them play basketball. They're taught the right way and they're very, very good kids so that's kind of similar to what I'm used to.”