Bell named Belpre football head coach | News, Sports, Jobs

Belpre City Schools Superintendent Jeff Greenley, right, hands new Belpre High School football coach Jimmie Bell III a Belpre hat and T-shirt during a special board meeting Thursday morning. (Photo by Tyler Bennett)

BELPRE — A football standout from The Ohio State University was named Thursday as the new head football coach at Belpre High School.

The Belpre City Schools Board of Education unanimously approved Jimmie Bell III during a special meeting Thursday morning when the board also approved a new five-year financial forecast.

Bell, of Youngstown, Ohio, was a standout at Ursuline High School and played at The Ohio State University under Coach John Cooper.

He was on the 1997 Rose Bowl championship team and won two Big 10 championship teams during his tenure at Ohio State.

After spending a couple of seasons in the NFL and NFL Europe, Bell started a new career as a life coach, author, speaker and consultant.

Having been involved with the community for the last two-and-a-half years, Bell said when first visiting Belpre that the town made him feel something in his soul and that he is humbled to be named the new head coach of the Golden Eagles.

“I do believe that I can be that B-12 shot to help uplift the community. Belpre has some really interesting, rich and powerful history. Being from Youngstown, I can understand how sometimes that history can go the wayside if you forget about it,” Bell said. “But also know being from Youngstown, that you can shoot some energy into the arms of the community and the community can be something that people thought that it could be again. So I’m extremely excited, I’m super humbled to God to be here and I’m excited to get work going.”

Bell succeeds Lance Binegar, who coached for one season.

“We would like to thank Coach Binegar, the wonderful work that he did last season and serving as head coach. It was on short notice, it was a difficult year and we are very grateful to him. On behalf of the board and our student-athletes, we express our appreciation to him for his hard work last year.” said Superintendent Jeff Greenley, who recommended Bell for the position.

“Jimmie has inspired the youth across the state of Ohio and all over the MOV. Although large in stature, somehow his heart and love for kids is even larger,” Greenley said. “So I had the chance to spend a lot of time in the past few weeks and I can’t wait to see how he’s influenced and coached the athletes both on and off the field.”

During the meeting, Treasurer Lance Erlwein presented an updated five-year financial forecast. Erlwein said there weren’t a lot of differences from the forecast the board approved in November.

The real estate tax standpoint that makes a majority of the district’s revenue went up and the tax collections are coming in better than projected.

State-aid funding slightly rose, as $110,390 (53 percent) of the Student Wellness fund was given back from the state, as funding was cut by Gov. Mike DeWine in January.

Erlwein also said that all other revenues were down about 15 percent, because of some revenue from other districts’ students from enrolling into the district.

“Operating transfers out are up. We anticipate higher than expected losses in the cafeteria food service department and the athletic department, all solely because of COVID. So we will probably have to transfer General Fund monies,” Erlwein said. “Like one-time transfers into those two funds to help them offset the loss due to COVID, so I’ve got that accounted for. Overall, there was a 1 percent variance and expenditures. So for the bottom line, we are down $131 from the last projection, which on a $12 to $13 million budget ain’t bad and that was not planned.”