Delaney Resigns as Head Football Coach

Head football coach Dustin Delaney announced in a closed-door meeting with the team this morning that this would be his last season coaching the Lancers.

Despite turning in his resignation on Aug. 31, the news was not announced until today during a team meeting in the weight room after their playoff loss to Blue Valley North. It was a shock to the players, including senior captain Zach Yeo.

“Nobody knew or thought he was going to resign,” Yeo said. “It caught us all off guard. Nobody said anything afterward, we all just walked out.”

Delaney’s exit is a result of moves made by district athletic administrators, Delaney said in an interview with the Shawnee Mission Post.

“What led me to resign was things that I saw people doing at the district level that were not in the best interest of kids,” Delaney said. “When it became clear that some of the decisions they were making were more about the adults involved than the students, I decided I couldn’t be a part of that.”

Delaney’s presence has been felt ever since he arrived at SM East. He brought with him a winning mentality, according to Yeo. One way Delaney did this was with the complete overhaul of the weight room.

“I remember back in 7th grade I would come up here for weights during the summer with Sherman and I remember coming into the weight room and there were a bunch of old dusty weightlifting equipment and there was one rack of pretty outdated stuff,” Yeo said. “And then coming in freshman year to all the updated racks, like 15 or 20 of them. It was a crazy upgrade.”

As Delaney exits, he takes with him his 52-8 all-time record at SME. That puts him at the second most wins in program history and he will leave with the best winning percentage in school history, 86.7 percent. The second best was Sherman’s percentage, which was 63.4 percent.

Delaney will complete the year as a physical education teacher even though he is no longer the football coach.