It has been announced that Casa Grande head coach Denis Brunk has stepped down from his position after two seasons.
In a phone interview, he said that he was finishing his masters in sports management from January to the end of April. He will be graduating in May. He hopes to then join on an internship with either SSU or SRJC in their athletic department.
Brunk announced his resignation to his team in a meeting on Friday.
“The kids were sad. I received some very nice messages from the kids. I told them that life goes on and it doesn’t stop at something like this.” he commented.
“I received some hugs and compliments from our athletes at our awards banquet last night. It was very nice”
Brunk went 8-14 in his two seasons as head coach of the Gauchos. He led them to the North Coast Section Division 2 playoffs in both seasons. He got won a playoff game for the Gauchos in 2017 when they defeated Montgomery 46-28. This year they got off to another slow start, but
In his 2 year prior to joining the Casa program, he went 8-13 for Santa Rosa. His first season they went 2-7 and winless in NBL play. In year two, he went 6-6, leading them to their first playoff win in many years when they defeated Northgate. They were just inches away from a second win, but fell to Windsor 38-37 in OT.
While he admits he has a good relationship with the Casa Grande administration, they sometimes didn’t see eye to eye.
“We weren’t going in the same direction. I am an old school coach and the administration wasn’t on my side on that part of the equation.” said Brunk
Brunk currently has a son that played on the freshmen team at Casa Grande and will continue with the program. I asked about if his decision had anything to do with his son being in the program and how that would look to others.
“That never even crossed my mind.” he said. “He did very well with the freshman program this year.”
He has encouraged his now former assistants to apply for the head coaching job and will hope for some consistency with the program. He will be helping athletic director Rick O’Brien with the transition in finding a new coach and helping the new coach in any assistance he may need.
“I’ll be available off the field for the new coach. I won’t be able to help on the field as of right now, but that could change.” Brunk said.
Brunk said he will intend on coming back to coach in the very near future, and said he received an offer from another school but declined to focus on finishing his masters.
sounds like a little butt hurt to me there “concerned parent”……
“Concerned Parent”… I hope you one day are able to see the situation from the other side and realize that you are completely wrong about Coach Brunk. Many of the kids on the casa grande team this year and last had WEAK mentalities and couldn’t handle coaching with the new millennial mindset that everything is personal. Coach Brunk wasn’t fully accepted ever because of the stubborn parents’ attitude that they wanted the previous coach back. And instead of supporting the new coach and new coaching habits, blame their sons’ failure to execute on the field, on the coaching staff. When the reality is that the Casa Grande team this year is nothing compared to the “great program” talents that this “concerned parent” is speaking on.
As a former member of both staffs, new staff members know and love Dennis, and old staff members want Trent Herzog back, which caused a rift in the staff throughout both years. The lack of acceptance is sickening.
Coach Brunk was never given the chance to do what he did at Santa Rosa, which was turn a sorry program into a more academically stable and winning program over 2 years. But it was because he had support. The parents at casa grande never supported the program with him as coach, so they shouldn’t have expected anything other than failure to a certain extent.
Hey “concerned parent” have some courage and put your name to your coach bashing posting.
“Denis Brunk advocate” I don’t know how you can trust a man to turn around a program when you can’t even trust the words that come out his mouth. For example, he states that he informed the players about his resignation via a meeting on Friday, however a select few were informed on a Thursday via text, so none of that statement is true. No meeting was held. Also he promised many things that he never followed up on. Such as, he promised that the practices were going to end at 5:30, when for the better half of the season many practices didnt end until 6:30 even though he knew full well many players had jobs and JC classes. He also promised a new training room that was never even started. Also, against the request of many players, he spent more money than the budget allowed on helmets to “prevent concussion” when ultimately the same amount of concussions, if not more occurred throughout the season. In a statement to Vicis he claimed that the players loved the helmets, when if polled I would guess the results would show about 60% of them would disagree with that statement. “Denis Brunk advocate” I truly hope that one day you’ll see it from the other side as well.