Bayuk resigns as coach at Campbell

By Joe Scalzo

When Jeff Bayuk was hired as Campbell’s varsity football coach three years ago, he promised to stay until he got the program turned around.

Having fulfilled that promise this fall, Bayuk decided it was time to leave.

“We got it turned around quicker than I thought,” said Bayuk, who went 7-4 this fall and led Campbell to its first playoff appearance in a decade. “I’m grateful for the opportunity and I’m just exploring some other opportunities right now.”

Bayuk, who shared district coach of the year honors in Division V this fall, went 11-20 at Campbell after successful head coaching stints at Canfield and Hubbard. He’s 155-94 overall as a head coach.

“It’s very time-consuming to be a head coach,” he said. “I’ve been a head coach since 1986 and it’d kind of be nice to be an assistant, where you coach your position and go home and come back the next day. I just want to get back to coaching and doing it on a pretty basic level.

“I have a lot of respect for guys like [Fitch head coach] Phil Annarella, [LaBrae head coach] Bill Bohren and [Howland coach] Dick Angle, who can be head coaches for such a long period of time.”

Bayuk, who still teaches at Hubbard, expects most of his assistant coaches to remain at Campbell.

“I’m very proud of what we were able to do at Campbell and I’m very confident those kids know what it takes now to be successful,” he said. “I know they’re going to have a great year next year.”

Bayuk, who submitted his resignation on Tuesday, has become a bit of an expert on turning around struggling programs.

Canfield went 1-19 in the two seasons before he was hired as head coach in 1986. By his third season, the Cardinals were 8-2.

He was hired at Hubbard in 1991, taking over a program that had gone 6-43 over the previous five years. He won a league title his first year and eventually won five more league crowns with six playoff appearances.

Campbell went 3-37 in the four years before he was hired.

He’s at least the fourth area head football coach to leave following the fall season, joining Chaney’s John Protopapa, Jackson-Milton’s Tim McGlynn and Southern’s Jim Brown. Brown was replaced by Michael Skrinjar.