High school football coach changes mind 24 hours after being hired to not accept job

New Apalachee football coach Kevin Saunders poses for a photo after practice on Tuesday, July 15, 2025, in Winder, Georgia.

Just 24 hours after accepting the first-year South Marion High School head football coaching job in Florida, former Apalachee lead man Kevin Saunders has had a change of heart.

According to a social media post on Thursday afternoon, Saunders announced that he has changed his mind and will not be accepting the head coaching job of the South Marion football program.

“Friends after much thought and prayers I have decided to turn the job down at South Marion. I feel terrible for doing this but I want to get back home closer to family. It’s time in my life to get closer to home,” Saunders said on social media regarding his decision to turn down the South Marion job.

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Per a previous Ocala Star Banner report, Saunders told the outlet about his excitement of accepting the South Marion job and the challenges that would be ahead.

“”The challenge,” Saunders said to the Ocala Star Banner on Wednesday regarding his hiring and why he was interested in the job. “Being the first coach of the program, that stuck out to me. I was very interested in it. It’s nobody else’s. It’s just mine right now.”

I’m not building a season, I’m building a program. And a program is built for many years. It’ll start with this bunch and we’ll lay the foundation with this team. We’ll start from there and build upon it — it’s like brick by brick by brick… So that’s how we gotta do it. And, hey, you’ve got to set the standard of how we want to be. We want to act like champions on and off the field and do what champions do. But they don’t know that because the school doesn’t have any championships so we’ve gotta teach them how champions act.”