Laurendi steps away from coaching

By rbrown
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Updated: February 15, 2022

Nashua North is shopping for a varsity football coach.

Dante Laurendi, who has been the program’s head coach since 2015, submitted his letter of resignation last week. He met with his coaching staff on Wednesday and his players the following day.

“This is something I’ve been thinking about probably into last season,” Laurendi said. “It’s taken me a long time to figure out. The same things kept popping in my head. As I told the kids, I don’t have the same energy and enthusiasm for the non-football stuff that’s really important – the things that make a good program a good program. The offseason stuff, the summers, the 7-on-7s. That stuff is really important and if I couldn’t do that with complete energy and enthusiasm … I didn’t want to do it half-hearted. When that stuff starts to become more work than enjoyment, that’s tough. I didn’t want to go through the motions. That was a big part of it.”

Laurendi, 49, began his high school coaching career in New Hampshire as an assistant at Manchester Central.
After two seasons as Central, he took over as the head coach at Manchester Memorial in 2005. He spent three seasons with the Crusaders before he landed a teaching job in Nashua in 2008. That’s also when he became an assistant on the North staff.
After five years as an assistant coach at North, he became Merrimack’s head coach in 2013.
Laurendi returned to North as the program’s head coach in 2015. He guided the Titans to the Division I championship in 2021.

“I think I’m going to take a break, but I don’t think I’m done coaching. I don’t know. I’m just going to hit pause, step back and see what happens. Right now I don’t have a plan to coach. That doesn’t mean things won’t change. I didn’t leave for any other opportunities. I left because I thought it would be the best thing for our program as far as doing things like they needed to be done in order to be competitive.

“I’ve been talking myself in and out. It was a daily battle. Ultimately when you keep thinking about it, that was a tell-tale sign. Not an easy decision.”

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