Veteran coach Ronn Lee has a wonderful retirement plan.

“I just don’t know what it is quite yet,” he joked this week.

Whatever is next for Lee it won’t include coaching football at St. Luke’s Episcopal after the current academic year. On Thursday, Lee announced he was stepping down as the Wildcats’ football coach after almost a decade at the place he lovingly refers to as “Mayberry.”

The school immediately named Joe Gilmore as his replacement. Gilmore will be the fourth head football coach in school history following Eddie Guth, John Beverly and Lee.

“I just felt like, at this point, our program probably needed to move to another level,” Lee said. “Everyone has chapters in their life. The people at St. Luke’s have been so influential in mine and my wife Sue’s life. There is nothing but love on both sides. I think the program can continue to grow from here.”

Lee isn’t calling this a retirement.

“I’ll never retire,” he joked. “I’ll always be doing something.”

He also didn’t shut the door on coaching again.

“Once a coach, always a coach,” he said. “I’m going to enjoy a little time off and see what is next. I haven’t planned that next chapter yet. We’ll just see what happens.”

Lee plans to finish the academic year at St. Luke’s and help Gilmore with the transition anyway he can. In nine years as the team’s head coach, he went 42-55 overall. His 2017 and 2018 teams – led by quarterback Jermaine Brown – won the region and reached the quarterfinals of the playoffs. The 2023 team went 6-5, losing in the first round of the 2A playoffs to Isabella.

“We had a lot of fun,” he said. “When we went there, it was a matter of getting the players to buy in. We didn’t start with a lot of numbers, but they continued to grow. We had Jermaine Brown at one point, and everyone knew him, and he was surrounded by a lot of good athletes.

“With him, we won back-to-back region championships and made it to the quarterfinals of the playoffs. That was a big deal for the school and the team. I think it showed the kids that hard work will pay off. We had the good fortune of being in the playoffs five times in nine years. One year, we couldn’t go because of COVID.”

Lee has spent the last 38 years overall coaching in Mobile, including 10 years at Murphy. He went 77-38 with the Panthers, never had a losing season and reached the playoffs nine times. He also coached seven years at Satsuma as head coach and three at Grand Bay.

It should be a smooth transition from Lee to Gilmore, who served on the St. Luke’s staff as offensive line coach from 2016-2018. He has spent the last five years as offensive coordinator at Northlake Christian School in Covington, La. This will be Gilmore’s first head coaching job.

“Obviously, I’m very excited for the opportunity and the challenges of being a head coach,” he said. “I had a lot of good coaches growing up. That’s what got me into this profession. They had an impact on me, and I’ve always wanted to pay that forward. At the end of the day if you are a coach, you are a teacher. I feel like you can make such a big impact on high school students.”

Gilmore was born in Mobile and graduated from St. Paul’s in 2009. He was a member of the first Saints’ state title team in 2007. He did his undergraduate work at Alabama and went to graduate school at South Alabama. He served as a student assistant for Joey Jones with the Jags, working with tight ends, before moving on to St. Luke’s and eventually Northlake.

Gilmore’s dad, Bo, has been a longtime Mobile-area coach, working at McGill, Davidson, LeFlore and Burns Middle School.

“Coach Lee and I got along very well,” Gilmore said of the transition. “He’s a Mobile coaching legend obviously. He’s laid the groundwork here. I owe a lot of where I am today and a lot of thanks to coach Lee.”

Gilmore said one of his first jobs will be solidifying his staff. He said he hopes to keep the majority of the Wildcats’ staff intact.

“I’m looking forward to the relationships I’m going to build at St. Luke’s,” he said. “I’m ready to go to work. That’s what I think the world needs right now. People who are going to work hard and want to work hard.”

It’s certainly a period of change for Gilmore. He’s already sold his house and he and his fiancée, Katie Lafreniere, plan to marry in three weeks.