Redwood football coach Jim Nelson resigns


Read the story in the IJ here

Nelson served at the helm of the Giants program for the last seven years. Nelson cited communication issues with the Redwood administration as one reason he decided to call it quits, as well as some poorer-than-anticipated anonymous evaluations from members of the football team. Nevertheless, Nelson said he was proud of the job his players did at Redwood and said he’ll look back on the time with fond memories.

UPDATE (5:35 p.m.): Redwood principal Nancy Neu said she was surprised by Nelson’s decision. She had nothing but good things to say about Nelson’s tenure. Neu added that the school will list the job opening at the district level, while several members of Nelson’s staff will continue preparations for spring practice.

The question of the hour is:

How do you think Nelson’s resignation will affect the football program at Redwood in the long term? I’d be interested to hear your thoughts.

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9 Responses to Redwood football coach Jim Nelson resigns

  1. Bobby says:

    What is it with Redwood lately. It seems like all of their major coaches have resigned within the last year. Jerry Piro in Basketball, Gino Pomilia in Baseball, and now Jim Nelson in Football. Brian, do you have any explanation on what is going on at Redwood?

  2. Brian says:

    Maybe there is a curse we don’t know about? Just kidding. I think if you look at each situation, it was different. Gino moved to SoCal to be closer to his kid who plays baseball for USC. Piro’s was more of a retirement. It seems like the Nelson situation is the only one of the three where there were points of contention between the coach and the administration. My hunch is I think we’ll see Nelson coaching again in the MCAL. He made it very clear to me that this wasn’t one of those “time to move on and spend time with the family” type of deals. If the right opportunity arises, I could see Nelson taking it.

  3. Redwood Fan says:

    Yes there is a connection. This administration has no clue how to support high school sports or realize how much character can be gained on the athlethic field and court. As a result coaches are left to fight and claw for their program that has no common vision or sense of cooperation and often ends up running its’ teams aka private clubs with backroom hiring……..I guess we should be happy if the admin folks know how to open the gym and turn on the lights.

  4. Go Giants says:

    It was time for a change of pace for Nelson and Redwood Football. I think that Coach Nelson was frustrated with the lack of cachet football has at Redwood, and a Redwood football needs a coach who understands he has to make Redwood football more popular rather than dwell on the athletes who aren’t playing football that would be really good at it.

  5. Tommy Glasser says:

    Finding a quality coach at the high school level isn’t an easy task. Loosing one can be devastating. Maybe The Giants will get lucky in their football program and end up improving the head coach position like they did in their basketball program. I’m praying you find another Steve Compagno out there that loves football. Winning is fun for everyone–IT STARTS WITH THE COACH!!!

  6. Jim Sterling says:

    It seems that none of you can read an article and figure out something’s missing. First, the Redwood administration is very supportive of athletics-there’s no comments in Brian’s article which suggests otherwise. Second, isn’t the story a little weird? Jim says he didn’t get a meeting on uniforms-OK, wait a little longer. Jim says it took a little longer to work out a home/home deal with an Oregon team (why spend district and Pigskin monies to travel that far-maybe missing some school in the equation?). Nonetheless, it was approved. Then the story gets silly-Jim says he’s afraid that his frustrations would affect his players?! Only way this could be true is if he tells the kids about his frustrations-not very professional. Then the story gets stupid-anonymous evaluations were poor-Jim equates these not to his coaching skills or relationships with the kids-he equates them with the Redwood administration’s delays. Huh? The two issues were post-season issues-the evaluations occured before those issues arose. What “ill-will” are the kids recipients of? Kinda dark, eh. Finally, Mr. Hagfeldt has been pegged as his natural replacement, but, he resigned 3 weeks ago. To what, coach Pop Warner football? Think people. Think. Was there a significant concern amongst the players that something was wrong with Jim? That’s the rumors that were permeating his program for years. Check it out.

  7. Redwood Fan says:

    Joe: Are you a PR guy hired by the district to spin good stories? Joe, I’m troubled, whose payroll are you on?

  8. Joe Sterling says:

    Redwood Fan-your query was one easily expected-instead of reading the article and thinking you pull a typical Marin move-attack the messenger. Maybe you were trying to be funny-but no one is amused. Redwood doesn’t hire people to spin their stories. More importantly, there is no story to spin, is there? Jim resigned, and he spoke. It’s just, that, his words don’t add up or make sense. How does his frustration with administrative problems (he spoke of two, one was positively resolved, the other we’re not sure of) transfer to problems with his players (unless, unprofessionally, he shared his frustrations) and how does it transfer to poor anonymous evaluations (did the kids blame him for ratty uniforms or for not being able to travel to Oregon?). Once again, Jim let the cat out of the bag-he spoke of poor evaluations. Finally, while I didn’t mention this before, it’s kinda cheap to blame poor evaluations on the troubles young kids can cause. Maybe, there’s some truth to what they wrote. Who knows. My purpose in writing was to challenge the IJ to look through the statements and get us the real story. Many friends have personal knowledge of coach/AD relations throughout the league. Honestly, I’d bet, every coach would have a story or two like Jim’s—even the private schools—it’s just part of the landscape. If those are Jim’s real reasons, his skin might be kinda thin, eh?

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