Football: Sacred Heart Prep Finds New Coach in Own Backyard
Mark Grieb Promoted From Assistant to Football Program Director, Varsity Head Coach
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And just because times and dates for spring practice already existed prior to his hiring, it doesn’t mean all the work is done.
“We need to put together practice plans and scripts and organize ourselves as a coaching staff before June 2nd,” said Grieb, who lives in San Carlos and teaches science at Gunn High in Palo Alto. “There’s some coaches that are going to stay in their positions, some coaches are going to move around a little bit and some coaches have left. There’s definitely going to be change, and as I told the guys today, I think it’s good that there’s change. It’s a chance for us to have a new beginning.”
Grieb, who turns 43 later this month, has experienced his fair share of new beginnings over the past four years in Atherton.
His coaching career began in 2013 at Menlo College shortly after his retirement from the Arena Football League, with his résumé including three AFL titles as quarterback of the San Jose SaberCats.
But after two seasons in charge of the Oaks, the football program was abruptly eliminated in a cost-cutting measure in February of 2015.
“I felt like after the program was dropped at Menlo, I don’t think my desire to coach ever left — and my desire to be a head coach never left,” said Grieb, who after graduating from Oak Grove in San Jose went on to play at UC Davis. “It’s just that sometimes that opportunity is there, and sometimes it’s not. And I really wanted to be in a place where I felt supported and I felt like I had a chance to be successful.”
Thy Neighbor
His next stop was just down the road, literally.
Sacred Heart Prep is the Atherton neighbor of its rival Menlo School, which shared the same football field with Menlo College.
SHP coach Pete Lavorato, coming off an undefeated campaign in which his Gators finished as the Central Coast Section Open Division champion, reached out to Grieb to find out if any of his football players were interested in coaching at the high school level.
“But, instead, we talked about him coaching and I was absolutely thrilled,” Lavorato said. “It was very fortunate that we got him a couple of years ago.”
Grieb joined the staff at SHP to initially work with quarterbacks and wide receivers.
“Competition just started as soon as he walked on the field,” said SHP junior Brad Yaffe, 17, who made the shift from defensive end/outside linebacker to quarterback midway through this past season. “He just got us going and going, doing drills.”
The Gators finished as a state runner-up for the second time in three years during Grieb’s inaugural campaign on the sidelines, but after key losses to graduation struggled through a 3-9 season in 2016.
Job Opening
For personal reasons, Lavorato recently left SHP after 14 years to take over the football program at The King’s Academy in Sunnyvale.
A six-person search committee, which sought input from other sources, was almost immediately formed to find a replacement.
“Within a week or so, we had close to 50 applicants from all over the country,” said Bret Simon, the director of athletics at Sacred Heart Schools. “Some coaches with great experiences, former professional players, high school coaches, college coaches — some really interesting candidates. We knew we had a very good candidate in Mark Grieb on our campus, already. As we went through our process, it became more evident that he was the right candidate for us for a bunch of reasons.
“No. 1 is he’s a great football person. And kind of 1A, his character and how he will carry on our culture is just perfect.”
Grieb’s predecessor wholeheartedly agrees.
“I think it’s going to be a great fit,” Lavorato said. “He’s a football guy, but more importantly he’s a real good guy. Very loyal as an assistant coach, he just wanted to help. Obviously tons of knowledge, but didn’t try to push all that knowledge on me. He was very humble and the kids really, really like him a lot.”
Continuity
Grieb’s twin daughters are seventh-graders at the Sacred Heart, having attended the lower and middle schools since first grade.
So, in a sense, his hiring brings a form of cohesion at a time of uncertainty.
“There was a lot of doubt about who they were going to select,” Yaffe said. “No one knew who they were going to select, but as soon as that came out and sent as an email to us, a lot of the kids were really excited. A lot of the kids are even thinking about playing for him who haven’t played before.”
“Continuity is a bonus, but it was not a primary factor,” said Simon, the former men’s soccer coach at Stanford. “We wanted the best person to run our program for the long haul, take the foundation that Pete Lavorato and his staff had built and grow it. So if it meant having someone from outside the program, that would’ve been fine. Mark got the job on his own merits, not because he represented continuity.”
Prized Recruit
One player excited to be mentored by Grieb is a certain eighth-grader at Belle Haven Elementary in Menlo Park.
“He obviously has a lot of experience and a lot of knowledge,” 14-year-old Raymond Price III said. “And I’m just looking to learn from him, because he’s obviously had a lot of success in his career and I’m pretty sure he’s going to teach me a lot of things and help me make it on the collegiate level one day.”
A 6-foot, 160-pound dual-threat quarterback nicknamed RP3, Price led the Santa Clara Lions to a runner-up finish in December in the 60th annual Pop Warner Super Bowl. He could become the latest MaxPreps football All-American to come out of SHP, following in the path of linebacker Ben Burr-Kirven and tight end Andrew Daschbach.
“He seemed like a well-spoken, mature young man for being an eighth-grader who will be a freshman next year,” said Grieb, who met the aforementioned RP3 at a welcoming event for incoming freshmen at SHP. “Again, that’s the type of kid that you’re so fortunate to work with at Sacred Heart.”
Fly Sweep
During Lavorato’s tenure, the Gators deployed his run-oriented fly-sweep offense, which featured a variety of plays and proved tough to defend.
How much of that remains in place is yet to be determined, though Grieb plans to work with a system familiar to that already in place in order to hit the ground running.
“I give Coach Lav a lot of credit for his creativity and really the way he coached it,” Grieb said. “I learned a lot from him in terms of not only coaching it, but the way he went about using his time in practice to really improve through the course of the season.
“But there is no way around the fact that I’m a different coach than he is and I’m going to have a different style — and I’m not going to shy away from that. I’m going to be myself, I’m going to coach the way I know how to coach. But, with that said, I don’t think it makes a whole lot of sense to start over, because we have all the tools and all the formations that we want to run at our disposal.”
It’s a chance for a new beginning, with the bonus of continuity.
Back
ATHERTON — It’s a busy time of the year for Mark Grieb, especially after he was announced last week as the football program director and varsity head coach at Sacred Heart Prep.
And just because times and dates for spring practice already existed prior to his hiring, it doesn’t mean all the work is done.
“We need to put together practice plans and scripts and organize ourselves as a coaching staff before June 2nd,” said Grieb, who lives in San Carlos and teaches science at Gunn High in Palo Alto. “There’s some coaches that are going to stay in their positions, some coaches are going to move around a little bit and some coaches have left. There’s definitely going to be change, and as I told the guys today, I think it’s good that there’s change. It’s a chance for us to have a new beginning.”
Grieb, who turns 43 later this month, has experienced his fair share of new beginnings over the past four years in Atherton.
His coaching career began in 2013 at Menlo College shortly after his retirement from the Arena Football League, with his résumé including three AFL titles as quarterback of the San Jose SaberCats.
But after two seasons in charge of the Oaks, the football program was abruptly eliminated in a cost-cutting measure in February of 2015.
“I felt like after the program was dropped at Menlo, I don’t think my desire to coach ever left — and my desire to be a head coach never left,” said Grieb, who after graduating from Oak Grove in San Jose went on to play at UC Davis. “It’s just that sometimes that opportunity is there, and sometimes it’s not. And I really wanted to be in a place where I felt supported and I felt like I had a chance to be successful.”
Thy Neighbor
His next stop was just down the road, literally.
Sacred Heart Prep is the Atherton neighbor of its rival Menlo School, which shared the same football field with Menlo College.
SHP coach Pete Lavorato, coming off an undefeated campaign in which his Gators finished as the Central Coast Section Open Division champion, reached out to Grieb to find out if any of his football players were interested in coaching at the high school level.
“But, instead, we talked about him coaching and I was absolutely thrilled,” Lavorato said. “It was very fortunate that we got him a couple of years ago.”
Grieb joined the staff at SHP to initially work with quarterbacks and wide receivers.
“Competition just started as soon as he walked on the field,” said SHP junior Brad Yaffe, 17, who made the shift from defensive end/outside linebacker to quarterback midway through this past season. “He just got us going and going, doing drills.”
The Gators finished as a state runner-up for the second time in three years during Grieb’s inaugural campaign on the sidelines, but after key losses to graduation struggled through a 3-9 season in 2016.
Job Opening
For personal reasons, Lavorato recently left SHP after 14 years to take over the football program at The King’s Academy in Sunnyvale.
A six-person search committee, which sought input from other sources, was almost immediately formed to find a replacement.
“Within a week or so, we had close to 50 applicants from all over the country,” said Bret Simon, the director of athletics at Sacred Heart Schools. “Some coaches with great experiences, former professional players, high school coaches, college coaches — some really interesting candidates. We knew we had a very good candidate in Mark Grieb on our campus, already. As we went through our process, it became more evident that he was the right candidate for us for a bunch of reasons.
“No. 1 is he’s a great football person. And kind of 1A, his character and how he will carry on our culture is just perfect.”
Grieb’s predecessor wholeheartedly agrees.
“I think it’s going to be a great fit,” Lavorato said. “He’s a football guy, but more importantly he’s a real good guy. Very loyal as an assistant coach, he just wanted to help. Obviously tons of knowledge, but didn’t try to push all that knowledge on me. He was very humble and the kids really, really like him a lot.”
Continuity
Grieb’s twin daughters are seventh-graders at the Sacred Heart, having attended the lower and middle schools since first grade.
So, in a sense, his hiring brings a form of cohesion at a time of uncertainty.
“There was a lot of doubt about who they were going to select,” Yaffe said. “No one knew who they were going to select, but as soon as that came out and sent as an email to us, a lot of the kids were really excited. A lot of the kids are even thinking about playing for him who haven’t played before.”
“Continuity is a bonus, but it was not a primary factor,” said Simon, the former men’s soccer coach at Stanford. “We wanted the best person to run our program for the long haul, take the foundation that Pete Lavorato and his staff had built and grow it. So if it meant having someone from outside the program, that would’ve been fine. Mark got the job on his own merits, not because he represented continuity.”
Prized Recruit
One player excited to be mentored by Grieb is a certain eighth-grader at Belle Haven Elementary in Menlo Park.
“He obviously has a lot of experience and a lot of knowledge,” 14-year-old Raymond Price III said. “And I’m just looking to learn from him, because he’s obviously had a lot of success in his career and I’m pretty sure he’s going to teach me a lot of things and help me make it on the collegiate level one day.”
A 6-foot, 160-pound dual-threat quarterback nicknamed RP3, Price led the Santa Clara Lions to a runner-up finish in December in the 60th annual Pop Warner Super Bowl. He could become the latest MaxPreps football All-American to come out of SHP, following in the path of linebacker Ben Burr-Kirven and tight end Andrew Daschbach.
“He seemed like a well-spoken, mature young man for being an eighth-grader who will be a freshman next year,” said Grieb, who met the aforementioned RP3 at a welcoming event for incoming freshmen at SHP. “Again, that’s the type of kid that you’re so fortunate to work with at Sacred Heart.”
Fly Sweep
During Lavorato’s tenure, the Gators deployed his run-oriented fly-sweep offense, which featured a variety of plays and proved tough to defend.
How much of that remains in place is yet to be determined, though Grieb plans to work with a system familiar to that already in place in order to hit the ground running.
“I give Coach Lav a lot of credit for his creativity and really the way he coached it,” Grieb said. “I learned a lot from him in terms of not only coaching it, but the way he went about using his time in practice to really improve through the course of the season.
“But there is no way around the fact that I’m a different coach than he is and I’m going to have a different style — and I’m not going to shy away from that. I’m going to be myself, I’m going to coach the way I know how to coach. But, with that said, I don’t think it makes a whole lot of sense to start over, because we have all the tools and all the formations that we want to run at our disposal.”
It’s a chance for a new beginning, with the bonus of continuity.
Sacred Heart Schools Atherton
Founded by the Society of the Sacred Heart, SHS is a Catholic, independent, co-ed day school for students in preschool through grade 12
