‘The back 9 is looking me in the face.’ Butler High football coach Brian Hales resigns

After 20 years coaching at Butler High School, and putting everything he had into making the Bulldogs’ football team great, Brian Hales said it was time to do something else.

Hales told The Observer Monday afternoon that he was resigning as football coach at the school. He said he planned to remain at the Matthews school as a teacher.

“My son (17-year-old Cooper) is going to graduate (from Butler) in June,” Hales said, “and it’s time. I’m 50 and the back 9 is looking me right in the face, and I’ve got to figure out what I’m going to do before I’m too old to do it.”

Hales grew up an all-conference football and basketball star in Scranton, Pennsylvania, and was college roommates with former Carolina Panthers punter Ken Walter. While visiting Walter in Charlotte, Hales fell in love with the warm weather.

In 2002, he got a job at Providence Day. Two years after that, Mike Newsome hired Hales as an assistant at Butler.

The two formed a dynamic tandem, with Newsome eventually promoting Hales to offensive coordinator and Butler eventually winning back-to-back state championships in 2009 and 2010.

When Newsome left for Kannapolis’ A.L. Brown High School after the 2010 season, Hales took over as head coach.

“Brian Hales will do an absolutely fantastic job,” Newsome said then. “He’ll handle the pressure like there’s no pressure. He’s definitely the guy.”

And under Hales, Butler’s program kept motoring along, just as Newsome said it would.

Hales’ overall record as head coach is 131-34. He’s never had a losing season and never had a team lose more than four games in a season.

He also coached one of the best teams this area has ever seen.

In 2012, the Bulldogs finished 15-0 with a third NCHSAA state title. That Butler team was recently ranked No. 3 among all teams from the Charlotte area over the past 40 years.

“There’s so many memories,” Hales said. “There’s thousands of them.”

Hales has coached on the three state championship teams and last fall, Butler beat a Top 20-ranked Langston Hughes (GA) team, earning one of the best regular-season wins in school history.

But Hales said the one game that stands out for him was rallying to beat Charlotte Catholic 20-19 in October 2022. Butler was down 19-0.

“We had the 2010 and 2012 state championship teams on the sidelines, on my birthday,” Hales said. “And we came back and won. And I got to celebrate with my kids, Kennedy and Cooper, after the game. I don’t think I’ll ever forget that.”

Hales’ departure creates at least two openings in Charlotte-Mecklenburg Schools.

▪ Berry High School hired former Salisbury High offensive coordinator Darius Robinson as its head football coach last month. Robinson replaced Chris Redding, who stepped down.

▪ Rocky River coach Tyson Fernandez was relieved of his duties earlier this year and the Ravens hired former Cabarrus County coach Kenneth McClamrock.

▪ That leaves, for now, openings at the new Ballantyne Ridge school set to open this fall, and at Butler, where Hales is leaving quite a legacy.

“It’s always good when you see a guy like Hales be able to walk out on his own terms,” said Independence coach D.J. McFadden.

McFadden, an Independence High graduate and state championship quarterback, was offensive coordinator under Hales at Butler in the spring 2021 season.

The pair helped rekindle the old Independence-Butler rivalry, which was the state’s best for many years.

“I hate to see him go,” McFadden said. “He’s built one of the most stable programs in North Carolina. We had some good matches in my short time (at Independence) but we did a good job bringing the rivalry back before he left. He’s a good friend of mine and I’m proud to say I worked for him and worked against him, and I wish him good luck on the next chapter.”

Hales is a former Charlotte Observer coach of the year and in 2013, he was named Xenith national coach of the year by the U.S. Army All-American Bowl selection committee. Hales was given the Youst award, named for legendary coach Bill Youst, whose life story was told in the movie “Remember The Titans.”

But Hales isn’t sure he’ll coach again.

“Honestly, I don’t know,” he said. “I probably would be surprised if I did coach again. Butler’s my school. Butler gave me my start, and took a chance on a guy with no head coaching experience. My kid’s graduated from here. Some of my greatest memories are there, and some my toughest memories are there, too.

“I gave it everything I had, and I don’t know if I could give to any other school what I gave to Butler.”