‘You can do it here.’ How a bouquet of flowers led to a seismic Lexington coaching shakeup.

Henry Clay shot for the stars and came home with one.

In poaching Phil Hawkins from city rival Bryan Station, the Blue Devils’ football program sent a message to the state of Kentucky: we’re coming.

That’s a reasonable expectation based on Hawkins’ track record. In 11 seasons as a head coach across three large Kentucky schools, he’s won 60 percent of his games (80-54) and engineered drastic turnarounds at two programs that had fallen on hard times.

Station was one of them. The Defenders won six games over the three seasons preceding Hawkins’ arrival in 2020; they won 10 games in his first campaign, including their first playoff win since 2015. Station also made the region finals that postseason, its first appearance in the third round since 1999.

And the Defenders didn’t stop there. After falling in the second round in 2021, another 10-2 campaign, they reached the state semifinals in 2022 (10-4, lost to eventual state champion Bullitt East) and the state championship game in 2023 (11-4, falling to Trinity).

Station’s 7-5 finish this season was its worst under Hawkins, but equaled the entire number of wins Henry Clay managed the last six seasons. The Blue Devils’ last winning season came in 2015 (7-5) and they’ve managed only two .500 campaigns in the stretch since.

Hawkins during an introductory press conference Friday was adamant that Henry Clay could not just finish with a winning record next season, but achieve double-digit victories and make a deep playoff run. He later expounded on those lofty benchmarks to reporters.

“It sounds like I’ve lost my mind maybe, but the reality is I want to win 10 games,” Hawkins said. “I want to go to a regional final, I want to go to a semifinal, and I’d like to take this bunch of kids to Kroger Field. If they can’t hear it from my mouth, it’ll never come true. That’s why I said it.”

How the hire happened

Fifty-five people applied for Henry Clay’s vacancy after Demetrius Gay, who’d led the Blue Devils since 2019 and been part of the staff for nearly three decades, resigned last month. The search committee interviewed about a dozen candidates, and connected with coaches who’d won state championships at other schools in an attempt to lure them to a new challenge.

“We were calling people that have four or five state championships,” said Kristian Junker, Henry Clay’s athletic director. “We have a great opportunity here.”

Part of the pitch was a forthcoming new high school building, expected to cost about $150 million and to be completed by winter 2028, and a move to block scheduling beginning in the 2025-26 school year, which is more accommodating to things like weightlifting classes.

Hawkins got on Henry Clay’s radar during the KHSAA Class A state finals between Raceland and Sayre, when Junker and members of the search committee met and mingled with him in a shared suite. It took a moment for Junker to warm to the idea of soliciting another coach within the Fayette County Schools system — such a move isn’t the norm in Lexington — but the more he got to know Hawkins, the more it felt like the right direction.

“This guy is talking our language,” Junker said. “We knew, on the front end, that we wanted someone who wanted a challenge; that’s why we were calling some of those people who were very successful. ‘Hey, you’ve won five championships there, here’s a challenge, you can do it here.’”

Junker wasn’t the only one who initially had cold feet. Hawkins as late as last week was ready to turn down Henry Clay’s advances, but a last-minute gesture by the Blue Devils’ administration caused him to reconsider again.

“Five days ago I was gonna tell ’em ‘no,’” Hawkins said. “And then my wife texts me and says, ‘Henry Clay sent me some flowers.’ That sounds simple, but then she said, ‘Would anybody else send me flowers for you to become their head football coach?’” A bouquet of flowers is really what turned this around.”

Hawkins was adamant about his affection for Bryan Station (the school’s athletic director, John Byard, did not return a request for comment). But the uneasiness and unrest that can come with sustained success isn’t something he particularly enjoys. It’s part of why he moved on from Doss, a Louisville public school that he dug out of a worse hole than the one Henry Clay has been in, for Apollo High School in Owensboro.

The opportunity to come home to central Kentucky — he’s a Franklin County High School graduate and started his coaching career as an assistant in the area — led Hawkins from there to Bryan Station. Now he’ll look to emulate past success through a move that’s sent ripples through Kentucky’s high school football landscape.

“I know it shocked the Bryan Station community a little bit, just as much as it probably shocked the Henry Clay community that the guy across town that’s winning all the games and beating us 56-7 now wants to come coach our team,” Hawkins said. “That can be confusing for people, and I understand that. But in the end it’s not confusing for me. I’m gonna roll my sleeves up and teach these kids to win.

“I like to look at situations, and maybe it’s hubris, and say, ‘I think I can fix that.’ … I’m excited for the challenge. I think this is gonna be the most fun I’ve had in a long time, really.”

Notes

▪ Hawkins is just the eighth football coach in Henry Clay’s 120-year history.

▪ Gay, who played for the Blue Devils and was a longtime assistant under Sam Simpson, whom he succeeded, will remain its track-and-field coach. He’s coached the Blue Devils to several individual KHSAA state titles and the boys Class 3A championship in 2015 and 2016.

▪ Henry Clay’s 2025 football season opener against North Oldham will pit Hawkins against Brock Roberts, one of his former assistants at Doss.

Herald-Leader staff writer Jared Peck contributed to this article.