When Statesboro High School Principal Ken LeCain, Ed.D., retires at the end of the school year, he will have put in a little more than five years in his current job but over 32 years as an educator.

For most of those years – more than a quarter century – he has been affiliated in some way with Statesboro High, which is the largest school in the Bulloch County system and now has about 1,700 students.

“Like I told my faculty yesterday, my heart and my head are saying  sign up for two  more years, but my knees and my feet are saying oh no, not going to happen,” LeCain said Thursday. “That’s not the main reason, but it’s a big contributing factor.”

Now 57, he said that being principal of Statesboro High is a younger person’s job, physically. That may be true the way he goes about it, walking by his estimate five miles a day in and around the massive building to keep up with students, teachers and staff.

He first came to Statesboro High for an after-hours coaching job while working as an elementary school physical education teacher, then took an all-day job at the high school as an assistant principal for 13 years and simultaneously as the school’s athletic director for 11 years.

“I love my job, I love this school, I love the kids, I love the faculty members, and it’s been home to me for 24 or 25 years. I love ’em, but I also realize, what was that old country song? ‘I’m on the back side 40 …’?” LeCain said. “So I want to get out, and I enjoy fishing and playing golf, and Karen, my wife, and I enjoy traveling, and I kind of want to do that.”

They have been married 31 years and have one son, Kyle, 28, a Statesboro High School and University of Georgia graduate who works for an Atlanta-based commercial real estate firm.

The retiring principal is not literally a Statesboro native but might as well be. He was born in Brunswick but was 2 when he moved here with his parents, Kenneth LeCain Sr. and the late Mary LeCain. Ken LeCain Jr. went to Georgia Southern University for his bachelor’s, master’s and specialist degrees, all in education. He attained his doctorate in educational leadership from Nova Southeastern University.

BA and Julia P.

LeCain got his first teaching job in 1986 at private Bulloch Academy, where he taught social studies and science for four and a half years and was a coach for football, baseball and track.

In 1991 when Charles Webb returned to his home town to be head football coach at Statesboro High, he brought LeCain in as an assistant coach, with a day job as a physical education teacher at Julia P. Bryant Elementary School.

After teaching from 8 a.m. to 3 p.m. at “Julia P.,” LeCain would report to Statesboro High and coach football players often until 8 or 9 p.m., he said. For the better part of 10 years he continued this two-school assignment. As a position coach, he helped developed the Blue Devils’ defensive ends and linebackers.

 In 1999 and 2000, LeCain also served as Statesboro High’s head baseball coach, while still in his day job at the elementary school,

Then Dale Wilkinson, who was principal at Julia P. Bryant, was reassigned to be principal of Statesboro High in 2000 and brought LeCain with him as an assistant principal. Wilkinson, who after retiring as principal served as an elected Bulloch County Board of Education member, passed away in 2015.

“What a great role model, teacher of school administrators,” LeCain says of Wilkinson. “He was just fantastic, letting you learn the trade, because it’s something you just don’t jump into and know how to do, and they can’t teach you how to be an administrator in college. You have to get in there and go through trial by fire.”

Award-winning A.D.

The title of Statesboro High athletic director was added to LeCain’s job description in 2003.

While serving simultaneously as athletic director and assistant principal, he was named Region 2-AAAA Athletic Director of the Year four times. In 2011, the Georgia Athletic Directors Association named LeCain statewide Georgia Class-AAAA Athletic Director of the Year.

LeCain last week attributed the 2011 award mainly to the fact that Statesboro High’s new building had been completed at the end of 2008. Other athletic directors liked the design and the way it “intermingles the athletic facilities with daily school life,” he said.

Being athletic director is a lot of work in a school that fields student athletes in 18 sports and employs more than 30 coaches, he said. But what he talks about most from his years as A.D. is how much he enjoyed the job.

“We have had a lot of good times athletically,” LeCain said. “We played in five state championships in football and won two of them and even got to host a couple of them. That was a lot of fun. I used to tell people during that time that I’d come to work and it would be like I’d get to play, because it was a lot of fun going to the Dome playing football in the playoffs, you know.”

Became principal

In May 2014, when the previous Statesboro High principal had to resign, Superintendent Charles Wilson asked LeCain to serve as interim principal. After a search, the Board of Education hired him to the permanent job in March 2015.

Now, the pending SHS principal vacancy has been posted for applications since Jan. 8 with a deadline of Feb. 12. Wilson said he hopes to have a candidate to recommend to the board by April 11 but that the school system will miss LeCain.

“Ken is just a solid person, and he has had a great career,” Wilson said. “He has served in a lot of capacities, and Ken’s responsible for a lot of the development and the planning of the athletic facilities when he was the A.D. over there.”

As principal, LeCain “stepped up at a time when  that school needed stability and  leadership, and  he not only stepped into that role, but he was very deliberate and considerate in bringing  people together to move the school forward,” Wilson added.

The most rewarding part of the job has been seeing how Statesboro High helps students with a wide range of talents succeed, LeCain said. He talked about students heading for top universities but also about those landing jobs through the work-based learning program.

“There are 1,700 different personalities in this building,” he said. “At the top, we have kids who are going to Ivy League schools, and we have some great artists and some great actors and actresses. But what makes me equally proud is we do a good job with the kids who don’t have all that going for them and finding them a place to fit in society.”

Another source of satisfaction, he said, is working with “the best group of teachers certainly that I’ve been around in 30 years,” adding that he hired a number of them.

He looks forward to handing out about 350 Statesboro High diplomas one last time on May 24.

Herald reporter Al Hackle may be reached at (912) 489-9458.