Next chapter begins with errands, T-ball for veteran Notre Dame coach

Following the end of his 27-year run as the baseball and softball coach at Notre Dame High School with the Bulldogs’ loss to Kennett in the MSHSAA Class 4 District 1 championship game, Jeff Graviett woke up this morning for the first time since he was a teenager without a team to coach.

“I started helping coach my brother’s 10-year-old team when I was 15,” Graviett told Semoball.com earlier this spring. “It’s just been in my blood and something I’ve always done.”

And it is something that he admits that he’ll more than likely do again, but just not in the immediate future.

“What is best for the school is for me to invest all of my time into the athletic program from top to bottom and give it all that I’ve got,” Graviett said of his Bulldog athletic director duties, which he has held for seven years.

His first order of business in this new chapter – after taking a breath – will be to find his replacement.

“There are great guys to take over,” Graviett said. “The program is not going to take a step down. Notre Dame was good before I started, and it’ll be good when I’m gone.

“I just want to focus on helping the school as an entire school and school program. I’m looking forward to the new challenges that come with that.”

His “focus” won’t stray too far from the local baseball diamonds, though.

The 47-year-old (unfathomably) has four grandchildren, two of whom are playing the sport, and that endeavor is already penciled into Graviett’s summer schedule.

“I haven’t made their first T-ball games,” Graviett lamented, “so that is definitely on the agenda.”

So is his spending time with his wife, Angie.

“I’m going to spend some time with my wife,” Graviett said. “I’ve been neglecting her for 14 years with these sports (he has coached both baseball and softball at Notre Dame). So, it is time to give her a little bit of attention and I have promised her that.”

The immediate future will consist of running errands and analyzing T-ball swings for Graviett, but in the future, he doesn’t see himself NOT coaching something.

“I don’t feel like this is it,” Graviett said. “I’ve got a long way to go before I can retire retire. I feel like God is going to place something in front of me again to give me an opportunity.

“I’ll be ready when that comes.”

During his tenure, Graviett’s baseball and softball teams found immense success.

“Notre Dame has just been consistently good,” Kennett coach Aaron New said Wednesday after facing the Bulldogs. “(Coach Graviett) is a great competitor and always has his team ready to play.”

On the softball side, Graviett’s teams won 17 District championships, a state title in 2009, and made nine Final Fours.

Graviett’s baseball teams won 11 District championships, and two state titles and made five Final Fours.

In total, he won nearly 950 games. However, ask him what he will cherish as much as anything, and it can’t be measured on a scoreboard.

“I look at the relationships,” Graviett said. “The wins are great. The state championships are great, but the relationships that I have built with parents and kids and multiple generations, that is something that you can take in and I’ll remember those forever.