TSSAA football: Video highlights from Ravenwood vs Franklin
Maverick Chance accounted for two TDs and Ravenwood defeated Franklin 28-7 in TSSAA football Week 9. Watch the highlights.
Will Hester resigned as Ravenwood High School’s football coach after four seasons to become an assistant principal at Brentwood Middle School.He amassed a 76-17 record across two stints at Ravenwood, including a 2015 state championship.Hester expressed his desire to move into school administration, viewing it as a natural progression from coaching.
Will Hester’s high school football coaching career has come to an end.
His life as a school administrator, though, is about to begin.
Hester announced his resignation as Ravenwood’s football coach on Wednesday after four seasons. He has been named an assistant principal at Brentwood Middle.
“Obviously, I don’t think there is ever a good time to make the decision,” said Hester, 48. “Becoming a school administrator is something that I’ve been working toward a couple years now and getting myself prepared to do that.
“I feel like coaching and administration are very similar things. Just as I think teaching is coaching. Being a school administrator is sort of the next step in the profession that I want to take.”
The Raptors completed a 13-1 season in 2024, losing to Class 6A runner-up Germantown Houston. The team returns 42 seniors in 2025, including quarterbacks Femi Babalola and Maverick Chance, who split time last year.
“I’ve been blessed to be the football coach at a lot of great programs and had a lot of success, especially at Ravenwood High School, where we made a bunch of memories and had a lot of phenomenal times,” Hester said. “Ravenwood football is not Will Hester like Will Hester is not Ravenwood football.
“Ravenwood football was good before Will Hester coached there, and it was good while I was gone, and it was good when I came back and will be good again. That’s because of the community and the people and all the things that make Ravenwood what it is.”
Hester went 76-17 in two coaching stints at Ravenwood, coaching the Raptors from 2013-15 and then 2021-2024. His second time at Ravenwood included a 24-21 semifinal loss to Germantown Houston in 2024 and two quarterfinal losses. He was 106-62 overall as a varsity coach, which includes coaching stops at La Vergne (9-21 in three years) and Florence, Alabama (17-16 in three years). He also started the Nolensville program, going 4-8 in his one varsity season.
Hester’s 2015 Ravenwood team won the Class 6A state title a year after finishing runner-up.
He returns to the school to be an administrator where he attended in seventh and eighth grade after his parents moved to Tennessee. He went on to play football at Brentwood High and was a former assistant for the Bruins.
“Those opportunities don’t come open a lot,” Hester said. “Those jobs are few and far between. It’s an opportunity that came at quite frankly at a hard time for all of us. But it’s one I couldn’t pass up.”
Reach Tom Kreager at 615-259-8089 or on the X platform @Kreager.