CLINTONVILLE — Ed McCallister was fired as AuSable Valley’s varsity football head coach on Monday.

McCallister was asked to resign but declined.

McCallister was relieved three days after the team’s first win of the season and five days before AuSable Valley’s Section VII Class C semifinal against Saranac Lake.

“The AuSable Valley varsity football team is busily preparing for the Section VII Class C semifinal on Saturday, Oct. 20, at Saranac Lake,” Kurt Munson, AuSable Valley’s director of health, physical education and athletics, said in a press statement emailed to the Press-Republican Wednesday afternoon. “The team will be guided by Nick Moore, who was appointed as head coach after the recent departure of Ed McCallister.

“The team is working hard to prepare for Saturday’s game and will represent AVCS.”

McCallister spent four seasons as AuSable Valley’s varsity football head coach, totaling a 9-24 overall record and 9-19 mark in the Champlain Valley Athletic Conference. In 2015, he coached AuSable Valley to its first Section VII Class C championship since 2006.

After the completion of the regular season, McCallister said he and his coaching staff decided to bring up 10 players from AuSable Valley’s junior varsity team. But because one freshman player in particular wasn’t among the 10 call-ups, McCallister said it created strife between the player’s parent and school administrators.

In an effort to resolve the dispute, McCallister promoted every JV player to the varsity team for Monday’s practice. McCallister said he spent 15 minutes on the practice field before being called into the school to be fired.

“This is nothing more than placating to this one parent,” McCallister said. “The coach from the varsity decides who he wants to bring up. No player has to be brought up and not every player has to be brought up. It’s a coach’s decision, and it’s their discretion who they want to bring up.

“For the three seasons we’ve been here prior to this one, there was not even a question or even a mention who came up; it was always a coach’s decision to bring up who you brought up.”

After the news of McCallister’s dismissal funneled down to AuSable Valley football players, the decision was not unanimously accepted.

Kenneth Rivers said his son, Isaac Rivers, and Matt Pray, both seniors on the team, elected to turn in their jerseys and not play in AuSable Valley’s upcoming playoff game after hearing McCallister would no longer be coaching.

“My son and him, and I don’t know about any others yet, are quitting over this,” Rivers said. “It’s ridiculous that at the end of the year and their career for high school to quit for probably their last game of their lives all because the school wants to dictate (coaching decisions). It’s heartbreaking.”

Rivers said his son and about seven or eight other team members held a sit-in at the beginning of the school day Tuesday to protest McCallister’s firing and pushed to have their coach reinstated, but the select players’ efforts did not take hold.

“I think that it was just those two because I encouraged players to stay and play,” McCallister said. “Matt was a captain, and that’s huge respect for me.

“They said, ‘We were brought up … if we believe in something, then we stand up for it.'”

Rivers hopes future football decisions will not be manipulated by the school administration.

“I would like to see a coach that is going to … stand up to the school and not be dictated by what these principals and superintendents and athletic coordinators want them to do,” Rivers said. “It’s one thing to make them do what’s right, but it’s another thing to dictate who is going to play.

“I want what’s right, regardless. If my son is going to be done or if I have grandchildren coming up, I want next year’s kids to be able to play for who they are and not what the school wants them to be.”

Since his dismissal, McCallister said he has received overwhelming support.

“My phone has blown up with former players contacting me and parents calling me,” McCallister said. “The thing that makes me feel good about this is to hear from my peers, my coaches in the league and to have them tell me that I got a raw deal.

“Everybody else that’s going on that plays, they lose or they win the state championship. I’m the only coach that went out on a winning note.”