Mater Dei replacing Frank McManus as football coach after one season
Eric Sondheimer April 12, 2024
In a stunning reversal, defending Southern Section Division 1 football champion Santa Ana Mater Dei is replacing Frank McManus as football coach after one season
as head coach
.
McManus won a Division 1 title last season after
in his only season
succeeding Mater Dei coaching legend Bruce Rollinson and was heralded as being “the right person to succeed Rollinson” by Mater Dei President Michael Brennan.
But Mater Dei announced in a news release and in a meeting with players on Friday afternoon that McManus was no longer the coach and no longer employed by the school.
https://x.com/latsondheimer/status/1778903350827982866
Randall Wright, the coordinator of football operations, will be the interim coach with help from associate head coach Khaled Holmes. The school will begin an immediate search that is expected to be swift with spring football practice scheduled to begin.
Look for
Former Long Beach Poly coach Raul Lara
is considered
to be a top candidate. He is head coach at St. Anthony, where Brennan used to be president.
Despite winning the Southern Section title and
state
Open Division
state
championship last season, there have been some internal grumbling
in about
McManus’ philosophy of not playing back
–
ups enough in games.
McManus was running a flag football team this spring of eighth-graders, and coaches who had seen him didn’t mention anything about a move like this being possible.
“We are saddened to announce Coach McManus’ departure from Mater Dei,” Brennan said in a school statement. “We wish him the best in his future endeavors.”
There had been rumors
going
for more than a week that a coaching change might be happening. Brennan did not
failed to
respond when contacted via email
on
Wednesday.
If Brennan goes outside the Mater Dei family for the next head coach, some might consider it risky opening up the program to an outsider. Rollinson was head coach
from beginning in
1989
on
, and McManus served as an assistant for 16 years. The program has become among the most successful in the nation.
The last time Mater Dei went with an outsider for an important athletics position was the hiring of Amanda Waters
, who was from San Diego,
as athletic director
from San Diego
. She was eventually forced out during an investigation into an alleged hazing incident when Rollinson was head coach.
