Wilcox football coach Paul Rosa steps down, Conor Dunn to replace him
SANTA CLARA — Paul Rosa, whose teams won two section and two regional championships as well as a state title in 11 seasons, has stepped down as Wilcox’s head coach, he told the Bay Area News Group on Wednesday.
Rosa cited a desire to watch his son Brayden, a former Wilcox star, play at UC Davis and the changing nature of high school football as main reasons for departing.
Conor Dunn will take over as Wilcox’s head coach. Dunn was the top assistant under Rosa this past season.
Rosa, who will continue as athletic director at the school, finished 93-38. His 2018 team went 14-1 and captured the Division 3-A state championship. In 2021, Wilcox was the Division 2-A state runner-up.
“It was becoming a lot with being AD, head coach,” Rosa told this news organization. “And I’ll probably help him out wherever he needs, like if he wants me to coach freshmen or something. I’ll do whatever he asks. Or if he wants me to stay on as an assistant, I can do that. I just can’t put in the same amount of time.”
Brayden Rosa was a freshman at UC Davis this year and played in eight games, contributing on special teams and defense and making five tackles. Because he didn’t use a redshirt, Brayden had only three more years of college eligibility.
Rosa wants to be there to experience those games without worrying that he’s simultaneously hurting his team at Wilcox.
“We made it to every home game, and even went to the Cal Poly game on the road,” Rosa said. “We were able to go to things. But with traveling on the weekend, it made it difficult to be in charge. So I don’t really want to short the team if I’m going to be traveling a lot.”
Rosa also noted that for a public school, it’s harder than ever to compete with private schools in the area.
Wilcox has perennially been one of the best public school programs in the Central Coast Section. But in an age of endless transfers and resources devoted to the top programs, it’s getting harder and harder for teams like the Chargers to keep up.
“The landscape of the private schools really trying to get as many kids as possible is creating a big gap between the privates and the publics,” Rosa said. “You know how many kids try to come to our school that we turn away because they don’t live in our area? You’re just not playing by the same rules.
“You can see the private schools are hiring people to make sure that they can get kids into their schools. I mean, it’s an arms race. And we don’t have any weapons, basically. To me, that’s the big disadvantage.”
Rosa also expressed dissatisfaction with the current playoff format in the CCS, which he feels rewards mediocrity by placing teams with lesser records in lower divisions. Those teams, some of whom come from higher divisions, are then poised to win section titles despite losing records in league play.
“I hate the playoff system,” he said. “Any system that rewards you with a better seed for losing more games is not a good system. They talk about competitive equity, but to me, the most inequitable thing there is you have boundary schools playing against non-boundary schools. It just doesn’t make sense to me.”
He also touched on Wilcox’s declining enrollment, which was exacerbated by the Santa Clara Unified School District opening MacDonald High in 2022. Rosa previously told BANG that SCUSD’s enrollment had declined overall despite opening a new school.
Overall, it was just time for Rosa to move on.
“We’re not going to change anything that we do,” Rosa said. “And I’m still going to help in some fashion. I like coaching football.”
The Wilcox coaching change adds to the constant churn involving high-profile jobs in the Bay Area.
Valley Christian, Bellarmine and Sacred Heart Cathedral of the West Catholic Athletic League are also seeking new leaders, as are Amador Valley, Clayton Valley, Las Lomas, Liberty and McClymonds in the East Bay.
On the Peninsula, Palo Alto of the Peninsula Athletic League’s Bay Division has an opening for a new coach.
Subscribe to our Bay Area Preps HQ newsletter for all our Bay Area high school sports coverage, including game analysis, scores, and everything you want to know about your Bay Area high school teams.