After 30 years of coaching high school baseball, East Webster’s Wes Johnson is hanging up his cleats.
Johnson recently announced that he will step down as the head baseball coach of East Webster and hand the reigns over to assistant Jordan Smith.
Johnson said his decision to step down was an easy one. Johnson said he will stay on and teach one more year at East Webster.
“I’ve been doing this for 30 years and I’ve got one at East Central who will play a lot next year and will have a freshman at Northwest,” Johnson said. “I want to be able to go see Walker play if I want to. I’ve known for several years that this was coming. With Jordan going to Northwest and Walker at East Central, it was just time for me to step back and be able to follow my kids. It’s been 30 years of coaching and I just felt like it was time.”
Johnson didn’t rule out a possible return to coaching at some point in the future.
“I’m not a guy who is going to sit at home,” Johnson said. “I might get back into coaching at some point or might go drive a bulldozer. We will just see what opportunities present themselves. I’m not the kind of guy to go sit around.”
In his 20 years at East Webster, the Wolverines won three state championships in 2006, 2008 and 2015.
“Those are a product of really good players,” Johnson said. “We were fortunate enough to have really good players. At small schools like this, you usually have two or three good ones. But it you are going to win a state championship, you better have seven or eight good ones. The years we won state championships, we didn’t have a weakness.”
Johnson said Jordan Smith will be announced as the new head coach this week. Smith has been an assistant at East Webster for the last five seasons.
“He has been here for four or five years not and he’s ready to be a head coach,” Johnson said. “He will have a good group coming back so they shouldn’t miss a beat. We graduated six guys and only three of them are starters. We’ve got a god group coming back so they shouldn’t miss a beat.”
The Wolverines were 18-7 last year and lost in the first round of the Class 2A playoffs to New Site in three games.
