‘It’s pretty bittersweet’: Gaines leaving Hannibal, returning to hometown to be head football coach at Battle

HANNIBAL, Mo. — Shawn Gaines’ introduction to Hannibal High School football came not as a player or coach but as a spectator.

Gaines, who grew up in Columbia, Mo., graduated from Columbia Rock Bridge in 2012 and in May 2016 from Culver-Stockton College, where he played linebacker. He made the trip to Porter Stadium to watch Hannibal play host to Columbia Battle in a Week Nine game on Oct. 14, 2016. Justin Conyers, Gaines’ defensive coordinator at Rock Bridge, was the head coach at Battle at the time, and Gaines had multiple cousins who were playing for Battle.

“At that point, I was fresh out of football and just trying to figure out what life was like without it,” Gaines said. “I will be honest, and I know this sounds so bad, but outside of my little bubble of the schools I got to play, I had no idea about the state of Missouri and how much good football was played around the state. I was very unfamiliar with Hannibal football at that point.”

Gaines became much more familiar with Hannibal three years later when he was hired as an assistant football coach before the 2019 season.

“For me to be coaching on the sideline in that same place three years later, as people like to say now, it was never on my Bingo card,” Gaines said.

After six years on the Hannibal football and girls basketball staffs, including the last three as the head girls basketball coach, Gaines is heading back to the place he called home for 25 years.

Gaines announced April 14 he had been hired as the head football coach at Battle.

“It’s pretty bittersweet, if I’m being honest,” Gaines said. “I’m not necessarily emotionally ready to leave (Hannibal), but to me, it was a once-in-a-lifetime deal that I had to pursue.”

Gaines enjoyed success as the girls basketball coach, guiding the Pirates to a 15-11 record in 2024-25 and a three-year record of 49-31. Hannibal sported a 5-37 record in the two seasons before Gaines arrived.

The final sentence of the announcement Gaines posted to his Facebook account read, “Once a Pirate, always a Pirate.” It is evidence of the impact the community has had on him since he arrived in 2016.

“I would like to consider myself somebody who bled black and red, even though I wasn’t from here,” Gaines said. “I’ve spent a lot of time coaching and working with the kids, and that’s really the big thing that I’m really going to miss. We have some phenomenal people in Hannibal, great athletes, great students, and that’s going to be the part that I miss the most.”

When the opportunity at Battle beckoned, Gaines could not refuse.

“It has been a dream of mine since I got into coaching to be able to come back home to Columbia and impact the community there,” Gaines said.

The support he received from his wife, Kaity Lee-Gaines, made the decision much easier.

“She was the one who really pushed me to do it,” Gaines said. “I never planned on or anticipated leaving. I didn’t want to leave until this situation came up, and I still really don’t even want to leave, but it was just one of those deals I couldn’t pass up, and that’s pretty much what she said.”

The tools of the trade he learned while in Hannibal will head to CoMo with him.

“The energy hasn’t necessarily changed, but how I’ve changed is how I approach coaching, how I understand a little bit more about high school sports and how they work,” Gaines said. “When I came in as a 25-year-old, I was still holding onto how things were at my high school, and I still do. I still have those reminders, but I’ve really gotten to understand the high school student and how they think. 

“Changing how I deliver information has been a plus. The point is to learn something new every year and try to apply that. That’s helped me out in the long run as a person and as a future parent — how to deal with kids and how to help them whenever things might not be the greatest. I’m forever indebted to Hannibal for all the things I’ve been able to learn.”

Most importantly to Gaines, he gets to keep doing what he believes he was meant to do.

“I always tell people that I believe I was put on this earth to do this,” Gaines said. “I truly do love what I do. You learn so much just really being a part of it and giving your all, and you’re not giving your all for yourself. None of this that I do is for me. I couldn’t care less about the records and all that. I’m more concerned about the experiences that the kids have.”

Gaines now gets to provide those experiences to his student-athletes at the school he would have attended had Battle been open while Gaines was still in school.

“That’s the magic about all of this,” Gaines said. “Sometimes I catch myself kind of in awe of the whole situation because of that. There is so much that’s gone into this and how unique of a situation it is to have grown up in Columbia, to have really been at Battle had I been a couple years younger. I mean, my sister graduated from there. 

“To move forward, find what I would consider my passion, my purpose in life, to start that in Hannibal, to fall in love with the place, fall in love with the game of football again and really identify what I’m supposed to be doing in life, to now being the head guy, it’s been so surreal and so crazy.”

The 2024 season was the first in Gaines’ tenure in which Hannibal did not play against Battle. Gaines already has intentions of getting that game back on the schedule.

“That’s the plan in the next cycle to hopefully get Hannibal back on the docket,” Gaines said. “It may be a little tough, but that’s what I’m trying to do.”

What a full-circle moment that would be.