Jason Bachtel, a 2003 graduate of Howard Payne, took over the Yellow Jacket football program in January of 2021 with both high school and college coaching experience.
Coach Bachtel spent the 2020 season as the offensive coordinator at Argyle High School, helping guide the team to the 4A Division I State Championship. He previously led one of the top NCAA Division III offenses at East Texas Baptist University for two seasons.
Along with all of his teams’ accolades on the field, he has also guided his players to strive in the classroom, with several named Academic All-State at the high school level and sixteen offensive players named Academic All-Conference in his two seasons at the college level. He has been actively involved with Coaches Outreach Ministries at the institutions where he has previously served.
As a student-athlete in the American Southwest Conference, Bachtel was a three-year letterman at quarterback for the Yellow Jackets. In those three seasons, HPU won nineteen games and the Yellow Jackets finished his senior year at 8-2 overall.
With a 16-0 final record in 2020 at Argyle High School, his offense averaged 48.1 points per game and 444.1 total yards per game (223.3 passing, 220.8 rushing), with a 66.0 pass completion percentage.
Argyle never trailed at any point during the season and outscored opponents by 521 points over 16 games with a 32.5 point margin of victory per game.
Before coaching at Argyle, Bachtel spent two seasons (2018 and 2019) as the offensive coordinator at East Texas Baptist University. There, he directed one of the most explosive offenses in NCAA Division III football.
In two seasons at ETBU, the team averaged nearly 500 total yards per game and 36.9 points per game. ETBU’s offense recorded over 600 yards of total offense three times in the 2018 season. His passing offense of 300.6 yards per game led the American Southwest Conference that year.
In 2019, Bachtel was one of only ten college coaches named to Dave Campbell’s Texas Football Magazine 40 Under 40 list.
He came to ETBU in June 2018 from North Forney High School, where he spent one year working with the offense as quarterbacks coach, running backs coach and offensive coordinator.
In his final year at North Forney, the offense averaged 53 points per game and finished 10-3 overall on the year, making a run into the playoffs. He spent six years as the head coach and athletic director at Scurry-Rosser High School where he was the 2013 District 6 Coach of the Year, having guided his team to a 12-1 overall record that season.
Bachtel has also served an assistant coach at Galena Park High School and at Gatesville High School. He started his coaching career as a student assistant at HPU in 2002 coaching running backs. In that year, HPU went 9-1 and finished ranked #17 in the American Football Coaches Association national poll and #10 in the Football Gazette poll.
Graduating from Howard Payne in 2003 with a Bachelor of Science degree in history, he completed a Master of Education degree in educational administration at Lamar University in 2018. He has been married to Tara for nineteen years and the couple has four children: Talen, Bailee, Brooklyn and Blaire.
