Glenn football coach Dave Shanahan retiring after 30 years

After serving as one of the most influential figures in the Elwood community for three decades, Dave Shanahan is calling it a career.

Shanahan, 56, coached varsity football and taught both physical education and health at John Glenn High School for 30 years from 1995 through 2024. He also served as the school’s athletic director for the past nine years. Earlier this May, he informed the school that he will be retiring from both positions.

Head wrestling coach TJ Brocking, who has served as a football assistant under Shanahan for 14 years, has been promoted to fill his role, according to Shanahan. Brocking will also continue to lead the wrestling program. Shanahan will stay on as the athletic director for one more year as an interim while Glenn searches for his replacement.

“John Glenn is a great place, and I just want to always leave a place better than I found it,” Shanahan told Newsday on Wednesday. “I’m very thankful for the career I had here, the people I’ve met and the impacts on my life. The students have had a great impact and made a difference in my life. I cherished every moment. The Elwood community has been great to me.”

He finished his Glenn coaching career with a 181-98-2 record, 21 playoff berths, two Suffolk IV division titles and two Class IV Long Island Championships in 2010 and 2011. He was also awarded the Rutgers Trophy in 2010 by his fellow Suffolk coaches for building the most outstanding team.

“The records, wins and titles are awesome, but it’s amazing what he’s done for so many kids off the field to set them up for life,” Brocking said. “He’s got that leadership quality, whether we’re playing pickleball in gym class or trying to win a playoff football game.”

Under his tutelage, five players — Ifeanyi Momah, Onyi Momah, Trevor Coston, Kevin Malloy and Damien Caffrey — went on to get tastes of the NFL. Ifeanyi Momah played in 14 games across two seasons with the Arizona Cardinals before starting a sports agency called 3XL Sports after retiring after the 2017 season.

“I would not be half the person I am today without Coach Shanahan,” Ifeanyi Momah said by phone. “It all started with him encouraging my older brothers to play football and use it as a device to get a scholarship to further themselves. Having Coach Shanahan teach me the game, push me and set that example by trying to further himself everyday for his students, it’s hard to not want to follow that and be the same guy that he is.”

Shanahan continued to be a mentor to him, even during his NFL career.

“ I didn’t really get a chance to do a lot in the NFL — I felt I could’ve done a lot more — and he was just always there for me,” Momah said. “He’d check in to make sure I was okay through the hard times. He’d call and encourage me whenever I had good times. He was always around.”

Shanahan was a star running back at Sachem High School and graduated in 1987.  He played football and lacrosse at C.W. Post (now Long Island University) from 1987 to 1990. In 1991, he launched his coaching career as a graduate assistant at C.W. Post and then spent the next two seasons as a graduate assistant at Stony Brook University. He is in the Sachem Athletic Hall of Fame and the C.W. Post Football Hall of Fame.

While coaching at Stony Brook, he was a student teacher at Sachem for a short while before landing a substitute job in the Central Islip district. He then spent one year at Floral Park High School before getting the job at Glenn.

“I’ve been doing it for 33 years in education, I’ve coached at the high school and college levels, I just felt it was the right time for me,” Shanahan said. “When you’re vested in teaching and coaching, you spend a lot of time developing that craft. I want to spend more time with my wife. I’ve always promised her I’m going to take her to Italy, and I’ve never gotten to do that. I’m going to follow through on that promise.”

Through those teaching and coaching ventures, Shanahan has turned even opponents into friends.  Over the years, Babylon football coach Rick Punzone, originally one of Shanahan’s biggest rivals, turned into one of his better friends.

“His retirement is really bittersweet,” Punzone said. “We’ve gone at it over 30 times. I’ll miss the camaraderie and the competition. We have a good friendship and a mutual respect for one another that will last forever. We’ve gone to lunch, we’ve gone golfing together. Our kids are athletes, so we text each other good luck with our kids and have been doing that for 15 years.

“I’m going to miss the coach that he is, but more importantly, I’ll miss the person, the father and the husband that he is, because he really is an outstanding guy,” he added.

As an opponent, Shanahan was notoriously difficult to solve, which is why Punzone selected him to be his offensive coordinator for the 2013 Empire Challenge game.

“I always felt that preparing for a John Glenn football game was one of the hardest things to do,” Punzone said. “They run a very sophisticated offense. We always had to be at the top of our game when preparing for a Glenn-Babylon game.”

Shanahan will still stay around the game in some capacity. His son, Kyle Shanahan, who is the head flag football coach at Bethpage, is helping run a summer clinic for an upstart organization called the Long Island Rush. After having their first clinic in June, the next one will be on Aug. 16, and Shanahan will be there to help his son run it.

“He’s simply the greatest,” Kyle Shanahan said of his father. “Everything he does inspires me. Now in my career as a teacher and as a coach, I feel like I have to inspire other people. He’s been a role model for me my entire life, and he continues to be that for everyone in his life. I’m just really lucky to have him as a dad.”

Newsday's Michelle Rabinovich contributed to this story.