Football has been a part of Scott Walker’s lift since he started playing in the Fairfield PAL youth league at age 7.

Twenty-four years later, he’s pulling back from the sport.

The 31-year-old Walker, head coach at Lawrence High School in Fairfield for the past three years, recently resigned from the post to spend more time with his family and to pursue a graduate degree.

“It got to the point where I needed to focus on some other things in terms of my education career and my family,” said Walker, who with his wife has two children ages 5 and 3. “It was time for me to make a decision to put my family first.”

Lawrence went just 5-19 during Walker’s tenure as head coach, including 2-6 last year. But there is some optimism in the football-rich community, as a talented sophomore class is poised to help the Bulldogs contend for a Pine Tree Conference Class A playoff berth next fall.

“The hard part of making that decision was the great group of guys that are coming through the program right now,” said Walker, an English teacher at Lawrence.

Walker also coached junior high basketball this winter, but has no immediate plans to continue his coaching career.

“Scott has been a great role model for our student-athletes, and he’s got great organizational skills,” MacManus said. “Hopefully he’ll stay involved with coaching kids at some level.”

Walker graduated from Lawrence in 1991 after quarterbacking the Bulldogs to the 1990 Eastern Maine Class A championship. He went on to play at Dartmouth College before injury cut short his career, then entered the coaching ranks.

He served as an assistant coach in Hanover, N.H., while still at Dartmouth and later served as a head coach at a high school in Michigan.

Walker returned to Maine, and served as an assistant coach at Colby College in Waterville for two years before returning to his alma mater. Walker was an assistant coach at Lawrence for one year before taking the head coaching job.

MacManus said he has received a couple of in-house inquiries about the football coaching vacancy, but that the position will be advertised before a successor to Walker is named. MacManus said interviews could be conducted in the next few weeks.