M-P head football coach resigns after five years

M-P head football coach Rudy Grandbois stepped down after five seasons at the helm of the Tommies.
Grandbois compiled a 18-31 record in his tenure and said he considered the teams 7-3 record in 2004 and appearance in the 4A district playoffs one of the biggest highlights.
A major part of the teams first winning season in eight years was a come-from-behind 15-14 victory at Snohomish High School.
After their first-round 21-14 overtime loss to Tahoma in 2004, M-P has had back-to-back 2-8 seasons.
Greg Erickson, Marysville School District athletic director, said Grandbois did a great job of getting the kids to turn out for the sport.
We would like to find a replacement just before or possibly after spring break, Erickson said of Grandbois successor. He said the replacement process will involve posting the job online and notifying the Washington Interscholastic Athletic Association.
The M-P football gig was the first head coaching position for the former walk-on gridiron player at Western Washington University.
After graduating from WWU, he began his coaching career as a defensive line coach at Anacortes High School.
In addition to AHS, Grandbois also donned the whistle as an assistant defensive line coach at his alma mater WWU for two years, and had coaching stints at Bellarmine and Mariner High Schools.
A health and physical education teacher in the Marysville School District for 10 years, Grandbois was at Marysville Junior High for five years before coming to M-PHS for the past five.
Erickson said Grandbois did a good job of getting a large number of kids to turn out for the football team while at the head of the program.
Part of it was that I was a teacher at the junior high and told them I would be coaching, Grandbois said of the casual recruitment.
Asked when he began thinking about hanging up his whistle and clipboard, he said he thought about a couple of times during the season and after the season I knew it wouldnt continue.
I had a conversation with Greg Erickson and told him that it is something that needed a change. There are a lot of good kids at the school that I am interested in following their progress, but sometimes things just dont work out.
He said that once coaching gets in your blood it is hard to get it out, and he is not sure where his coaching future will take him.
The proud father of two busy daughters, ages four and seven, plans to assist them with their basketball season before re-evaluating his coaching career after the New Year.
Overall, I think it was a great experience for me to run a big program like M-PHS, he said.

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