Rudy Grandbois guided the Marysville-Pilchuck High School football team to one of its finest seasons since the mid-1990s and helped spark a surge in athlete turnout.
But after five seasons as M-P’s head coach, Grandbois said it’s time for a change. He resigned late last month after the Tomahawks completed a second consecutive 2-8 season.
“It was a tough decision to make,” Grandbois said. “I really have a lot of great kids here … and I wanted to see them through.”
M-P was 18-31 under Grandbois, including a 7-3 record and a trip to the Class 4A district playoffs in 2004, the team’s first winning season since 1996. But the Tomahawks have struggled since.
“It’s been a tough couple of years and I just think that the program needed to go in a new direction,” Grandbois said. “I’d felt that I’d given it my best effort. The kids are great. We just weren’t able to put it together. It’s just time for a change.”
Grandbois has two young daughters, ages 4 and 7, and he said he looks forward to spending more time with them. He will continue to teach health and physical education at M-P.
“Rudy is a really good coach and he’s good (with) kids. He’s had a positive impact on a lot of kids and he will continue to do that as a teacher,” Marysville School District athletic director Greg Erickson said.
M-P will start its search for Grandbois’ replacement in mid-January, Erickson said.
The M-P job was Grandbois’s first as a high school head coach. His previous teaching and coaching roles at Marysville Junior High helped him build a well-stocked program at M-P. The Tomahawks started this season with a total of 140 players on their sophomore, junior-varsity and varsity squads. “He sure increased interest,” Erickson said.
Said Grandbois: “I knew a lot of kids (from coaching and teaching at the junior high) and a lot of kids liked me, I guess. They wanted to come and play for me.”
Asked to recall the fondest memories of his tenure as head coach, Grandbois said the best was during the 2004 season, when the Tomahawks rallied for 12 points in the fourth quarter and beat Snohomish 15-14 at Snohomish. It was M-P’s second victory in a 5-0 start.
“That was the highlight of my whole career,” Grandbois said. “It was just a huge win for us.”
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