Steve Savarese, the longtime executive director of the Alabama High School Athletic Association and a familiar name to football fans across Mobile and Baldwin counties, announced Wednesday that he will retire from the post he has held for the past 15 years.
Savarese, 68, made the announcement during an afternoon press conference at the AHSAA’s Montgomery headquarters. He is only the fourth full-time executive director in the organization’s history, a role he took on in 2006 after stepping away from a head coaching career that included stops at McGill-Toolen Catholic High School in Mobile and Daphne High School in Baldwin County.
Savarese set his retirement date for July but said he intends to “serve at the pleasure of the AHSAA Central Board” until the organization hires and transitions in a successor. He said the decision ultimately came down to family, citing a desire to spend more time with his wife, Beth, their children and four grandchildren.
“You know when it’s time,” Savarese said. “And when you’re 68 like me, about to be 69 in October, you just know when it’s time. Was it a certain thing? No. But I will tell you there’s a young man sitting back there — my son — he’s the one that asked me, ‘How many more birthdays you going to miss, dad? How many more celebrations are you going to miss with the kids, dad?’ And I love them more than anything in the world. So dad’s coming home, mom’s coming home.”
Before taking the AHSAA’s top job, Savarese built a coaching résumé that stretched across two states and nearly five decades. Born in Leeds, he attended college in Kansas, where he landed his first head coaching position at Douglass High School and led the program to a state championship in 1978. He returned to Alabama six years later to coach at Ensley High School in Birmingham, then went on to lead programs at Benjamin Russell in Alexander City before taking over at Daphne, where his 2001 squad captured a state championship.
His final coaching stop was McGill-Toolen, where he was the winningest active AHSAA head coach in the state at the time he left the sideline in 2006 to become the association’s executive director. Savarese was inducted into the Alabama Sports Hall of Fame in 2019, cementing a legacy that spans both the Mobile and Baldwin County prep football communities.
“Forty-seven years is a long time, and it’s now time,” Savarese said. “I’ve had an awesome time — teaching, coaching, serving as an administrator and, most humbling, serving as executive director of the Alabama High School Athletic Association. To follow icons such as Cliff Parker, Bubba Scott and Dan Washburn has been the greatest honor of my life.”
“Professionally, I would not change a thing regarding my career,” he continued. “I genuinely feel that I have never worked a day in my life. I’ve tried to approach each day knowing that nothing worthwhile was ever achieved without enthusiasm. God has truly blessed me.”
Savarese said the students and athletes he worked with over the years have been the highlight of his career, and that those relationships remain something he treasures. He also praised his wife of 45 years, Beth, calling her the “best spouse he could possibly ask for” and drawing laughter from the room with a lighthearted jab at AHSAA associate executive director Alvin Briggs, saying his wife was a better driver than Briggs because “Alvin likes to draft, you like to pass.”
AHSAA Central Board president Van Phillips said the organization plans to post the job opening on the AHSAA website Thursday morning and will accept applications from all interested and qualified candidates. A seven-person search committee will review applicants before recommending a candidate to the Central Board to become the association’s next executive director.
Phillips credited Savarese with steering the AHSAA to its best-ever financial stability, including the creation of a revenue-sharing initiative that has funneled more than $16 million to member schools since 2010 — a program that has benefited high schools throughout south Alabama and across the state.