Mike Battles Sr.

Mike Battles played football at Southern Miss from 1967-69 earning a letter each season. Battles worked as an assistant coach at lincoln High School in 1970. He landed his first head coaching position at Pell City in 1973 where his only team finished 5-5. 1975 found Coach Battles on the sidelines as the head coach at Irwin County High School in Georgia. His first team finished 13-0 on the way to a Georgia state title. In four seasons his teams combined for a 30-15 record. He spent the 1978-79 season as the head coach at Walter Wellborn. His two teams went 12-7-1 with one playoff appearance. Battles next head coaching job came at Pascagoula High School in Mississippi for one season in 1981. His lone team finished 5-7, losing in the first round of the state playoffs. He returned to Walter Wellborn for the 1982 season where he would remain for the next eleven seasons. Battles led the Panthers to a 21-5 record during the 1988-89 seasons, his only back-to-back 10-win campaigns at Wellborn. Battles stepped down at Wellborn following the 1992 season and moved to Hueytown High School. His three Golden Gopher teams finished 19-15 with a semi-final appearance in the 1995 state playoffs. 1996 found Coach Battles on the move again. This time the moving truck stopped in Gautier, Mississippi. It was the schools first football team but it mattered little as they finished the season 9-0, playing a JV schedule. His next team went 10-0 before losing in the first round of the state playoffs. Battles moved just down the road to Biloxi High School for the 1998 season. His four seasons at the school produced a record of 17-28 record and one playoff appearance in 2001. He returned for a third stint at Walter Wellborn in 2002 for a couple of years. In fifteen seasons at Wellborn his record overall record was 90-44-1 with seven playoff appearances. Coach Battles made his final move to Handley in the fall of 2004 where he remained for eleven years. His teams compiled an 88-45 record with the Tigers. The 15-0 Tigers won the 2011 State Championship by defeated Madison Academy 20-14. Battles is one of only a handful of coaches that have had unbeaten regular seasons in three states. His team went 13-0 at Irwin County, Ga., at Gautier his team went 9-0 and 10-0 in back-to-back years in 1996 and 1997 and he went 10-0 in 2011 at Handley. Battles is a 33-year coaching veteran in the state of Alabama with a record of 216-143-1. He has compiled a playoff record of 25-16 while his teams are 97-66 in area and region play. His record in other states is 71-48-1, giving him an overall record of 287-191-2 in 43 years as a head coach in three states. In 2015 Coach Battles took over the football program at B.B. Comer for three seasons. Coach Battles was named the Class 4A Coach of the Year by the Alabama Sports Writers Association in 2010. He was the coach of the 2012 Alabama-Mississippi All-Star Game. His son Mike Battles Jr., head coach at Bibb County, won the 100th game of his coaching career earlier in 2011.