Nathan Hale High School, also known as West Allis Hale, are scheduled to play its first game of the 2026 high school football season on Friday. The Huskies will be without more than half of their coaching staff.
Five coaches were placed on administrative leave during a district investigation.
Those five high school football coaches, plus at least one other, chose to resign. The timing is not ideal.
Nathan Hale does not win a lot of high school football games, historically speaking.
Established in 1931, Nathan Hale High School is a public school located in West Allis, Wisconsin— 10 miles west of Milwaukee. It enrolls ~1,200 students in Grades 9-12.
The Huskies compete in Division I of the Wisconsin Interscholastic Athletic Association as first-year members of the Woodland Conference. Their high school football team has not had a lot of success in recent years. They have not finished with a winning record since 2008. They have only two winning seasons since the turn of the millennium.
Nathan Hale went 0-9 in 2017, 1-8 in 2018, 1-7 in 2019, 3-6 in 2021, 2-7 in 2022, 1-8 in 2023, 3-7 in 2024 and 2-7 in 2025. This upcoming season does bode well for a turnaround.
To make matters worse, the Huskies lost most of their coaching staff with less than one month until the first game. That includes the head coach.
At least five coaches resigned amid an undisclosed investigation.
Nathan Hale had 11 coaches in total on its high school football staff. At least six of the 11 coaches have since resigned from their roles in just the last few weeks. That leaves only four coaches and a new interim head coach, who previously served as the defensive coordinator, to prepare for Kaukauna.
Principal Matthew Lesar told parents on August 6 that an undisclosed number of coaches had been placed on administrative leave tied to a “confidential personal investigation” that did not cause “any concern regarding the safety or well-being of any of our student-athletes.” A follow-up letter on August 10 informed parents those coaches had “decided not to return.”
According to WTMJ-TV4, the coaches did not receive an communication from the school or from the district to explain why they were placed on administrative leave. The lack of communication led them to resign.
Former West Allis Nathan Hale High School football head coach Ryan Teetz shared the following post on Facebook:
There comes a point in life when you have to say goodbye to something you love. Today is one of those days for me.
With a lot of emotion, I am announcing that I will be stepping away from the Nathan Hale Football program and school as a whole.
For the majority of my life, I have been intertwined with the Nathan Hale Football program. Coaching was something I always knew I would eventually do because, quite simply, it is in my blood. My grandfather, parents, sisters, aunts, uncles, and cousins have all been teachers and/or coaches at some point in their lives. Nathan Hale Football has been a family affair for generations, and that will always be something I am incredibly proud of.
I have been fortunate enough to experience some of the highest moments in this program’s history, as well as some of the toughest. But you don’t grow without both.
I will never regret putting on the green and white as a player or coach. This program gave me so much more than football. It gave me friendships, memories, lessons, mentors, and experiences that helped shape the person I am today.
From my first day here, I tried to give everything I had to Nathan Hale. I put my blood, sweat, and tears into this program. I spent countless hours trying to make things better, whether that meant helping raise thousands of dollars, building and creating things on my own time and with my own money, or simply doing whatever I could to make sure our athletes had opportunities and resources comparable to those of other programs.
I never did those things expecting anything in return. I did them because I cared. I cared about the players. I cared about the coaches. I cared about the school. And I cared deeply about Nathan Hale Football.
This is not easy. Nathan Hale has been such a huge part of my life that it is difficult to imagine not being physically present on the sidelines, in the weight room, at practice, or around the program. There will always be a piece of me that belongs here.
My grandfather always believed that green and white ran through his veins. I believe that too. Unfortunately, I can no longer support this place though.
I will always be grateful for the opportunity to play here, coach here, serve this program, and be part of something that means so much to my family and me.
Here’s to a new day, a big change, and a much brighter future ahead.
— Ryan Teetz
According to multiple reports, the investigation focuses on a group text that was shared with school administrators. The chat supposedly involved Huskies coaches both current and former. What was actually said in the thread has not been made public. The school district denied an open records request, citing the open investigation.
Defensive coordinator Cody Schumitsch was appointed as the interim head coach. Nathan Hale plays its first game on Friday.