Webb School – Bell Buckle will not field a TSSAA football team in 2025, one year removed from the best season in school history.
Webb coach Evan Gay and athletic director Jena Jones confirmed to The Tennessean on July 18 that the administration made the decision because of low player numbers on the roster.
The future of Webb’s program is not clear. The school declined to comment on whether it was shutting the program down permanently. Webb also wouldn’t comment about Gay’s assertion that he was asked via text message to resign a day after the decision was made.
The Feet were headed into 2025 with 35 players before “six or seven” transferred during the offseason, Gay said. Four-star 2026 prospect Joel Wyatt was among the last to leave when it was announced July 17 that he had enrolled at Oakland. Combined with 10 seniors who graduated this spring, only about half of Webb’s roster remained.
Among them are four seniors who initially transferred from outside of the country, one of them being running back, James Pierre, who rushed for 1,289 yards and 12 touchdowns last season. Gay said he is concerned for the international transfers who are uncertain about where they’ll play this fall.
“The Webb School’s football program has been significantly impacted by new TSSAA transfer rules, which went into effect in April,” Jones said in an emailed statement to The Tennessean. “While we empathize with the student-athletes who will be unable to compete for the Webb Feet on the football field this season, their health and safety remains paramount in this decision.”
It’s not clear if Webb’s transfers utilized the new rule or other transfer exceptions that previously existed. Students transferring under the new TSSAA transfer rule could not be officially declared eligible at new schools until the TSSAA began processing forms on July 14.
According to Gay, he received a text message from Jones on July 17 that said new Webb Head of School, Polly Parker, was asking for his resignation. Gay, who hoped Webb could form a co-op team with another school before the season, said Parker has not spoken to him directly since she began her role as new headmaster this summer.
Gay said he’s thankful for the Webb community but is frustrated with the support the program received after it went 6-5 in 2024, clinching a TSSAA football playoff berth for just the second time. Webb played eight-man football in a Middle Tennessee league for small private schools before beginning a full TSSAA schedule in 2019.
“It’s just a very tough situation. It’s freakin’ heartbreaking, man. It feels like I’m in a million pieces right now,” Gay said. “When you put your heart and soul into it and you don’t get support, it’s a really tough pill to swallow. It’s very tough because this isn’t a black-and-white thing. You’re dealing with a lot of our students and football players’ lives. Handling it the way they did, we didn’t put them in a situation to succeed. (The players) have got a lot of things to figure out in a couple weeks.”
Tyler Palmateer covers high school sports for The Tennessean. Have a story idea for him? Reach Tyler at tpalmateer@tennessean.com and on the X platform, @tpalmateer83.
He also writes The Tennessean’s high school sports newsletter, The Bootleg. Subscribe to the newsletter here.
