John Stark’s McGinty resigns

By rbrown
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Updated: May 11, 2021

John Stark Regional High School is in the market for a varsity football head coach.

Kevin McGinty, John Stark’s head coach for the last three seasons, resigned Friday after spending five years with the program. McGinty was an assistant coach under former John Stark head coach Rod McQuarrie for two seasons before he replaced McQuarrie as the program’s head coach.

John Stark will also be without three assistants next season who were with the team in 2020. Offensive coordinator Jeff Kaplan died earlier this year, McGinty said last season’s JV head coach moved out of state and another assistant began a new job that will prevent him from coaching.

“The frustration of the job compared to the joy I get out of it was unbalanced,” McGinty said. “I’m starting my masters program and without having enough help I don’t think that I could have done a quality job as head coach if I were to return. Having to train new assistants … there’s just no way I could make that kind of commitment. Having good assistant coaches is everything for a program because the head coach has so many other things they have to worry about. The actual running of the football program is done by assistants.”

McGinty, who teaches at John Stark, also has two daughters who attend the school. One of his daughters plays soccer at John Stark and he said he’s looking forward to watching her play.

“I was never able to watch my daughter play soccer because we were always practicing, so I’m going to commit to doing my masters program, teaching and being a dad for a couple years,” he said. “Once I get that masters program completed I would probably be looking to hook up (coach) with another program.”

McGinty said there are only four seniors returning from last year’s team, but the program has a strong freshman class.

“I’m really broken up about having to resign,” he said. “I really wanted to try to keep doing it. With those three coaches I could have coached and done the masters program at the same time, but once I lost them there was no way to do it. When I was younger, being a head coach is all that I wanted to do. Now that I’m older all I want to do is coach football and not have to deal with parents or administrators. I enjoy coaching football a lot more than being a head coach.

“There are great kids that go to John Stark and I hope they find a really strong candidate to guide this program forward.”