Ethan Atchley is bringing a new face to the football program and the community as a whole.

After a couple months of searching for a new coach, East has made a final decision on who will lead the team into a new division.

Atchley was the former head coach at Christian Academy in Lexington for the previous five seasons. He stood at a record of 46-18 with Christian Academy. People who know the community well influenced Atchley to take the job.

Atchley is a 29 year old from Cleveland where he played one semester of football at Case Western Reserve University. He then transferred to the University of Kentucky where he got his marketing degree in 2011. Atchley said, “During my senior year of high school I thought if I could do anything it would be to coach high school football or college football after the impact Matt Rosati, future Ohio high school football hall of fame coach, made on my life. I truthfully didn’t give Case Western a fair experience football wise but I decided to transfer due to some family circumstances and feeling like I needed to get away from the Cleveland, Ohio area where I grew up.” Atchley started coaching at Lexington Christian Academy right out of college. He got two job offers in sports marketing with ticket sales, one of which was to move back home to Cleveland and work for the Cavaliers. However, he still stuck with coaching and stayed on his path to hopefully coach college football someday. He took a job teaching business classes at Lafayette High School and continued to coach defensive backs at Lexington Christian Academy.

At Christian Academy Atchley was very successful. Atchley said, “I came to Bullitt East because of the potential, the community that’s here and the excitement to jump up to 6A and get in the district with Male, the challenge is enticing.”

The Bullitt East football community had a meeting where players, parents and staff members of the school could meet Atchley on last Tuesday night. Atchley said, “I’m still waiting for the one bad thing to go wrong here since I’ve taken the job. Everything has gone either according to plan or better according to plan.”

In the past years, the football program hasn’t had the best success. A new coach in town could go two ways, improvement or struggle. Atchley said, “I think one of the biggest things is just getting in the weight room and establishing some key competition and competing every day under the rack and under the bar. Ultimately just getting the kids, young and the old, out who are truthfully the best athletes and the biggest kids we can in order to compete against the largest classification schools here in Kentucky.” Atchley wants all students who are interested in playing to come out, even if they are a senior and haven’t played before. Anyone is welcome.

Atchley said, “It will be exciting, it will be an exciting brand of football that is going to get the ball to a lot of different people and it will be a fast paced game. If you’re good we will find you, and if you’ll give us a chance I think you’ll be excited to play football here at Bullitt East. There is a two week window for everybody who wants to think about coming out and they can’t come out one day than quit. They go to give me two weeks and if after two weeks, they don’t like it, I understand. But more times than not that two week window has a pretty good track record to keep kids coming out.”

This year the Chargers will be entering class 6A from class 5A. Their district will improve with the move as the Male Bulldogs, Southern Trojans and Fairdale Bulldogs are now in their district. Atchley is excited for the challenge and facing some bigger schools.