John Lima Out as Brandon Football Coach; Alumni, Parents Ask Why

Karen Rodriguez said she and others in her organization have no clue as to why John Lima will not be leading the Brandon High School Eagles on the football field next year.

As president of the Brandon High School Alumni Association, and a parent of a sophomore, all she knows is what she’s read in the paper, that despite leading the Eagles into the playoffs this season and last, Lima “has been dismissed from the job by Eagles principal Carl Green and athletic director Tibor Kovacs.”

The TBO.com article, first posted Dec. 15 and updated a day later, further notes that “Kovacs declined to give a reason for dismissing Lima saying only" that he and Green "have decided to move in a different direction for 2012.”

Whatever that direction may or may not be  — and there is speculation among some parents that a new coach already has been selected — Rodriguez is certain of one thing:

“I’m very disappointed John is leaving because I felt he had a grip on the team and the boys were making progress,” she said. “They looked up to him. And he always paid tribute to the history of Brandon. He was always very interested in the history of the football team and the school.”

Indeed, in an , Lima said it was the first thing he learned coming to the school five years earlier, that “it’s a town and a school mired in tradition.”

“The people who graduated from Brandon, and there’s about 35,000 of them now, are very proud of the school and the community,” Lima said at the time. “My goal in coming here has been to build a winning program with integrity. That’s the number one thing I want to do.”

If Cheryl Stanbro were a grading woman, she’d give Lima high marks for making good on his pledge.

Her son, Garrett, joined the team as a transfer sophomore from Newsome High; this year, as a junior, he was backup quarterback.

“I would put Coach Lima’s character up against anybody else’s,” Stanbro said. “Absolutely. I would trust my son to the ends of the earth with him and never have a concern that John would give him nothing but the right advice every time.”

Stanbro, who is active with the Brandon Football Club, a booster club for the team, said she, too, read about the account in a TBO.com posting, and then texted the coach with her concerns over the news.

“I let him know that if he needed anything, he had support,” she said. “He didn’t know more than we knew.”

That the parents in her organization are concerned about the support the football program receives is not new news, she said.

“Some of the parents have worked almost a full-time job, trying to bring awareness to the program, and frankly we feel like we’re getting nowhere,” she said.

As for Lima, she added, a two-time Coach of the Year honoree, who took Brandon to the playoffs four out of the six years he was with the Eagles, the word does need to get out about his merits as both a coach and mentor.

“As far as a person and a coach, he was football 24/7,” she said. “But he’s very dedicated to the kids. With John, the academics came first. If they didn’t have the grades, he wouldn’t just say, ‘You can’t play.' He would try to figure out what was going on in the kid’s life and where they needed help and then he would make sure they got that help. And later he'd ask, 'Is everything OK? Is there anything I can do?' I really appreciated that, that my son had somebody to go to and that John Lima was there to be his mentor.”