VERO BEACH — Former Sebastian River High head football coach Randy Bethel will not be coaching for Vero Beach High School this season. Bethel accepted a coaching position at Vero Beach High School and was scheduled to be on the field for their first official practice Monday.
Bethel had been the football coach for Sebastian River for 16 years and was terminated last December after leading the Sharks’ to their only District Championship in team history.
Bethel’s son Patrick, who transferred to Vero Beach High, was at practice with the defense, but Coach Bethel was not.
Head Coach Lenny Jankowski said that he hoped common sense would prevail.
“We knew that when we filled out the paperwork with the state that Randy may not be eligible to coach,” Jankowski said. “But we hoped that the state would see that Randy was released by his previous school and moving forward.”
According to the FHSAA website, Coach Bethel is ineligible to participate in coaching the Fighting Indians this year because of rule 9.2.5 Relocation of a Coach.
The rule reads: A student who establishes residence at a school within one year of the relocation of any member of the coaching staff of the student’s sport(s), on any level regardless of which level the student participated, will not be eligible to participate in the sport(s) coached by that coach until the student has been in attendance for one calendar year if said coach is in any way affiliated with the athletic program at the new school. Establishing such residence is bona fide evidence that the student is attending the school in whole or in part for athletic reasons.
Therefore any player who transferred from Sebastian, other than Bethel’s son, would be ineligible to participate on the Fighting Indians football team if Bethel were to be added to the coaching staff.
“Randy and I have always had a mutual respect for each other but I didn’t really know much about him personally other than that we had a couple of mutual friends that thought a lot of Randy,” Jankowski said. “Randy was looking forward to moving on from Sebastian and, using the summer as an opportunity to get to know him, it went really well. And unfortunately, through a technicality, it’s not going to work out this year.”
Bethel will continue to be a teacher at Vero Beach High School this year but will not be coaching so that the transferring students from Sebastian River will be eligible to play.
Coach Jankowski said that Bethel plans on using the time off from coaching for more important things.
“It’s unfortunate that the players are going to miss out on getting to learn from Randy, but he will use his time off to just be a dad and that’s not a bad thing either,” said Jankowski.
