Cantey steps down as BE’s football coach to focus on family

John Cantey resigned as the Bishop England High School football coach Monday afternoon, and then spent the night coaching his son’s flag-football team.

 

The 49-year-old Cantey, who has been connected to the Battling Bishops’ program ever since he could walk, will focus on his family just a few years after suffering major health issues. He was diagnosed with ulcerative colitis, which eventually required major surgery three years ago.

 

Cantey said practices started late in the day due to heat and humidity concerns and lasted past 8 p.m., which meant little family time when he got home. He was responsible for the BE football program, which fields three teams.

 

“I had to stop and think. I had to think about what I was doing,” Cantey said. “I can’t do this, be at school all the time and be away from my family. My son was face-timing me during practice just so we could talk. I thought to myself, ‘He needs me more than I need this.’”

 

Cantey is the son of Jack Cantey, the winningest football coach in BE history. The younger Cantey was the ball boy as a toddler and went through the BE feeder system. He was a quarterback for the Bishops and graduated from the school, which at the time was located on Calhoun Street, in 1992.

 

Cantey coached high school football for 27 years, including 26 at BE. He was the Bishops’ head coach for 16 years and became the first football coach in school history to win a state championship. The 2011 team went 13-1 and won the Class AA state title with a 10-0 victory over Central. The Bishops repeated as state champs in

’12 with another 13-1 record that culminated with a 21-0 triumph over Abbeville. The Bishops outscored foes by an average of 38.4 to 9.5 a game.

 

The team went 9-3 in 2013, but started to slide after injuries to quarterbacks and other key personnel decimated the roster depth.

 

The Covid-19 pandemic didn’t help matters much, either. The Bishops were 4-3 in the shortened 2020 season, and won only seven out of 32 games the past three seasons.

 

He concludes his tenure at Bishop England with 98 victories. In addition to the two state titles, Cantey’s teams won five region championships thanks to a 25-game conference win streak.

 

Cantey said he will continue to teach at the school until the end of the academic year. He said he doesn’t plan to look for another high school coaching job. He says he will focus on real estate and property management.

 

For now, it’s family time after the school bell rings.

 

Cantey, a model family man, and his wife, Haley, have three children together, including John Robert, who is 11, 9-year-old Lilly Kate, 8-year-old Thomas Hayes and also is Fletcher Aylor’s stepfather.

 

 “John’s a great person and an even better father,” Haley Cantey said in a previous interview with the Daniel Island News. “Wherever we go, whether it’s to the store, the movies or to play putt-putt, our friends will see us and say, ‘There’s John and his little ducklings.’”