As of Wednesday night, the future of Jamesville-DeWitt’s well-regarded and highly-decorated boys basketball coach, Bob McKenney, remained up in the air.
With reports circulating that the school district asked McKenney to take leave of his duties or be dismissed, district officials said that no decision on the five-time state champion’s future had yet been reached, while former players and other community members rose in near-unanimous opposition to McKenney’s possible forced departure.
The controversy began to unfold on March 8, when J-D faced Christian Brothers Academy in the Section III Class A final at SRC Arena.
Dom DeRegis, the team’s second-leading scorer, was suspended for that game for what was called a violation of team rules. Still, he was allowed to sit on the bench, and several of his teammates wore his number 5 on T-shirts and socks before the game, which the Red Rams lost, 69-46.
Then, on Tuesday night, speculation about McKenney’s future spilled into social media. Comments of support were made by several of his former players, including standouts Brandon Triche, Dajuan Coleman and Tyler Cavanaugh, as well as other former players.
“(I’m) ashamed to be an alumni of JD (right now),” said one former player, John Sheedy, on Twitter. “What the administration forced Bob to choose is downright disrespectful.
“ (Bob was) a man who never put himself first and cared more about his players than anything else. Proud I was able to play for him for 2 years & put on that red ram jersey. Today I say I played for bob McKenney and not Jamesville Dewitt.”
DeRegis also weighed in the matter on his Twitter account, saying “I hope people know that I had nothing to do with this.”
On Wednesday, it was reported that, the day before, McKenney was given an ultimatum to resign or be fired. J-D school superintendent Dr. Alice Kendrick issued two statements on the matter, neither of which supported those reports.
The second statement by Kendrick said that the DeRegis suspension did not factor whether McKenney would maintain his job.
“With the completion of the varsity boys’ basketball season, the program is under review,“ said Kendrick’s statement.
“Any issues concerning the leadership of the program are unrelated to any circumstances surrounding the final sectional championship game, any individual player, or the team as a whole. No decisions have been finalized concerning the future of the program.”
In his two decades at J-D, McKenney’s teams won 378 games and lost just 78, for a win percentage of .811. Counting 145 games won at Milton High School in Vermont, McKenney has 523 career coaching wins overall.
Five times, McKenney’s Red Rams went all the way to the state Class A championship in Glens Falls, doing so first with an undefeated (29-0) team in 2004, and then again for four consecutive years (tying a New York State Public High School Athletic Association record) from 2008 to 2011 with the likes of Triche, Coleman, Cavanaugh and Alshwan Hymes in feature roles.
J-D also have won eight sectional titles in McKenney’s tenure, and even though the Red Rams couldn’t quite match that dynastic success in recent years, it still reached the Section III final each of the last two seasons, falling to Bishop Ludden in 2014 and CBA this winter.
Yet players also said that McKenney’s influence on them as people was far greater than that of a coach, a sentiment echoed on Twitter by Onondaga Community College men’s coach Dave Pasiak, a former colleague of McKenney when he served as OCC’s athletic director.
“Bob McKenney is more than one of the best coaches I know, he’s one of the best people,” said Pasiak. “The impact he’s had on young people is immeasurable.”
