Longtime coach and educator Mike Ebert will retire at the end of the 2025-26 school year, closing a career that has spanned nearly three decades across Baldwin County schools and leaving a lasting mark on generations of student-athletes.

“It’s just time,” Ebert said regarding his retirement announcement. “I love Foley; I have loved my career, but it’s just time for me to move on from public schools in Alabama.”

Ebert — currently the head softball coach and a health teacher at Foley High — has served schools throughout Baldwin County since the mid-1990s. Over that time he has coached a wide range of sports including football, baseball, cross country, basketball, bowling, soccer, tennis, volleyball, track and softball, building a reputation as one of the area’s most dedicated youth mentors.

His wife, Tammy Ebert, said “He likes to say he’s coached everything other than cheerleading,” as she recalled the many different sports lives they have lived and the blessing they have been served due to the many hats the Eberts wore in teaching and athletics.

“I remember dragging three kids up to the ball field,” Mrs. Ebert stated. “Home and away games all the time, that was just the standard. I would work in the concession stand, I was the diamond girls sponsor — just very busy lives we have led — it's been a lot of fun, and we're blessed because of how he's blessed other people. I think it's come back full circle on us.”

But this summer, Ebert will “hang it up” on the Gulf Coast. Although, the legacy he leaves behind in classrooms, dugouts and locker rooms across Baldwin County will continue for decades to come.

A BALDWIN COUNTY LEGEND

Throughout his career, Ebert worked at several schools across the county, including Perdido School, Baldwin County High School, Summerdale Middle and J. Larry Newton School.

Yes, Ebert is recently known as a baseball coach, softball coach or educator, but the majority of his coaching accomplishments came in a sport of which he claimed to have little knowledge of before taking the role. As Foley’s varsity cross country coach from the late 1990s to 2000s, Ebert was named Baldwin County coach of the year 10 times and won 10 county titles combined between the girls and boys programs.

Outside of cross country, his most notable success came on the baseball diamond at Foley where Ebert became the winningest baseball coach in school history with 149 victories and helped revive the Lions’ program during his tenure. Eventually, Ebert aided tremendously in the process of getting baseball and softball fields on the Foley High campus, most commonly known now as “The Brickyard.”

In 2001, he guided Foley to its first playoff appearance in the updated format since 1960. Three years later, the Lions captured the school’s first area or region baseball title with the 2004 Class 6A Area 3 championship and advanced to the second round of the state playoffs. However, even as his career continued to grow, Ebert’s family remained at the center of many of his decisions. When his son Jordan Ebert went to Auburn to play college baseball, Ebert stepped away from coaching prep sports and moved to the middle school ranks so he could spend more time watching his son play.

From 2016-19, he taught Physical Education for Foley Intermediate School before eventually retiring (the first time). That was until Foley’s administration and the field began to call him back, a moment in life that Ebert and his wife said was unplanned.

“I was ready to come back,” Ebert said. “I got towards the end of my career and couldn’t wait to retire, then I realized still I loved the kids, the people and working. It almost rejuvenated me (when he got the offer to come back).”

In 2023, Ebert returned to Foley High as the head softball coach while continuing to teach health class. Since then, he has worked to rebuild the Lions’ softball program while continuing to mentor young athletes.

“To see where this program was before he got here, you don’t really understand it until you are in it,” Ebert’s son Jordan said. “It’s tougher than it looks to turn a program around — but to look over here and see they have a chance to win 15-20 games is crazy.”

Beyond coaching and teaching, Ebert has also helped hundreds of students pursue opportunities at the next level. He is a founder of and head of college recruiting services for Starfish 23, a nonprofit organization aimed at helping prep athletes pursue a collegiate career. Although Starfish wasn’t founded until 2019, he has worked for more than 25 years helping over 700 athletes pursue their dreams of playing college sports.

THE FAMILY NAME

Ebert’s connection to Foley runs deep, and although he spent his childhood in Virginia while his father worked in the Pentagon, he bleeds the Lions colors through and through.

Foley athletics has long been part of the Ebert family story, as his father Tommy played football and basketball under legendary Foley coach Ivan Jones and is a member of the Foley High School Hall of Fame. His mother was a Foley homecoming queen, and his parents were high school sweethearts — roots that shape Ebert’s lifelong ties to the community. His daughter Kaitlyn is a Foley graduate as well —  the only one of his three children — and was Miss Foley High before going off to Eastern Illinois on a track and field scholarship.

Over time Ebert made his own path to the Gulf Coast, where he eventually graduated from the University of South Alabama with a K-12 education degree. He also attended East Tennessee State and Faulkner State Community College while playing college baseball.

In 2022, Ebert was inducted into the Foley High School Hall of Fame for his coaching career, joining his father among the school’s honored alumni.

Years later, after Ebert took over the Foley baseball program, his son — current Foley head baseball coach Jordan Ebert — could often be found around the field as the team’s bat boy shadowing the players that he claimed to be “super heroes” to him then.

Today, Mike and Jordan often coach on opposite fields at “The Brickyard,” occasionally glancing over the fences while coaching to check each other’s scores.

“We are getting to a point in our relationship where he is my best friend," Jordan said of his father. “Getting to do this (coaching separate sports for the same school) is the coolest — he used to tell me to enjoy what I have now because it’s going to go quickly and you’re really going to miss these days.”

LASTING RELATIONSHIPS

The student-athletes Ebert coaches and teaches now often remind him how long his career has been as he runs into many of whom he coached or taught their family members.

“I see them in the halls everywhere, I can see it in their faces before I even find out who they are,” Ebert said. “I have three players now that I coached their parents. I have 8-10 kids whose parents I taught in P.E., so that’s pretty cool.”

Foley softball currently has three seniors, and all of them have played for Ebert for several years. Jamaya Bronson and Alyssa Thomas share particularly strong connections with their head coach along with several other players on the team who had parents playing for Ebert years ago.

Thomas said that in the short time she has known Ebert, he has helped make her a better athlete and teammate. Ebert even coached and taught Thomas’ father years ago, adding another layer of meaning as the seniors prepare to finish their final season while their coach eyes his retirement.

“I am going to be sad, but I am happy for him,” Thomas said. “He gets to keep doing what he wants to do and accomplish what he wants to — it is our senior year so we are leaving too, but it’s going to be sad not seeing him out here as coach anymore.”

Bronson has known Ebert even longer. He coached her in travel ball when she was younger and later taught her in P.E. at Foley Intermediate School. As his retirement approaches, Bronson said the memories she has of playing for him — especially the funny ones — will stay with her.

“Another memory was when he was on third base and he asked someone for sunscreen,” Bronson said. “He put the sunscreen on and his whole face was white, he didn’t even rub it in — he didn’t even know at first until he took his hat off.”

This comes by no surprise, being that Ebert stated several times that part of his coaching philosophy is making it fun for the players. However, those who have coached alongside Ebert say his influence extends far beyond the field.

Current Foley softball assistant coach Larry Bonds, who Ebert stated was one of his closest friends, said the past three seasons have been filled with memorable moments.

“I’m personally very grateful for the opportunity to work with him and for him,” Bonds stated. “I feel very blessed to be a very small part of his coaching staff but also to be a close friend. His love and passion for the game and all his players is what makes him successful. Under his leadership, the Foley softball program is on the way up. My favorite part of coaching with him is winning close ballgames and this year we are having a lot of favorite moments. Like Coach Ebert says ‘One team, one heartbeat. It’s great to be a Foley Lion.’”

With Ebert and Bonds leading the program, the Lions currently sit at 12-8 with hopes of pushing toward a 20-win season. Foley has not had a winning softball season in nearly 20 years, meaning the Lions are within reach of a historic year in Ebert’s final season.

Former Foley assistant baseball coach Thomas Edwards added more to Ebert’s impact on others, extending beyond softball or any fields for that matter.

“Coach Ebert was not only a great coach for his team but was an amazing mentor for me during my time at Foley,” Edwards said. “There wasn’t a situation he hadn’t been through and couldn’t give you solid advice on. I was far from home and he took me in like family. He provided a wonderful example of how to lead by caring deeply about everybody in the building.”

During his days coaching all these teams, Ebert recalled times when he coached alongside Ivan Jones and current Gulf Shores Mayor Robert Craft. While legendary Foley head football coach Lester Smith was in his second stint with the Lions, he and Ebert spent time together coaching the Foley weight room with Smith eventually becoming one of the mentors Ebert had a close relationship with.

The connection between the two families goes even deeper though. Ebert’s wife once taught Smith’s wife at Coastal Alabama when she was 71 years old, and Smith said he remembers watching Ebert’s father play football for the Lions when he was growing up.

“He’s an excellent coach,” Smith said. “Foley High School is certainly going to miss him a lot — he and I have known each other for a long time and I think the world of him and his family.”

When you have coached as long as Ebert has in one county, the relationships you can create are endless.

NOT DONE YET

When the school year comes to its end, it will mark the close of a long chapter in Baldwin County athletics. But retirement will not mean stepping away from the work Ebert loves. With his children starting families of their own, Ebert plans to stay close to them while continuing to pursue coaching and teaching opportunities outside of Alabama public schools.

“I will coach anything,” Ebert said when asked about continuing his career elsewhere. “I don’t want to get too far away from Baldwin County because I will have four grandchildren (here).”

For the ones who have only known Baldwin County with Ebert coaching or teaching in it, a bittersweet ending slowly arrives. But no matter where the next chapter takes him, to many students, players, former players, staff members and more, Ebert will always be known as someone’s head ball coach.