When football season kicks off in August, Joe Kinnan will not be on the Manatee Hurricanes' sidelines for the first time in nine years.
Kinnan, who has won nearly 300 games, five state titles and led the Hurricanes to seven state championship appearances as the team's head coach, informed Manatee Athletic Director Jason Montgomery Friday that he would be taking a medical leave of absence for the 2014-15 football season due to heath concerns.
"It's hard for him, because he's as competitive of a human being as you'll ever meet...I think his intent right now is to take a medical leave of absence for the next school year and then see where he's at," Montgomery said. "Like he told me, he said 'I'm not retiring and I'm not stepping down. I'm taking a leave of absence and I know you guys have to do what you have to do' and he said, 'I don't even know if I'll be an option a year from now.'"
Kinnan released a statement in an email amid his decision to step aside.
"I want to thank the community for their 29 years of support of me as the head football coach at Manatee HS," Kinnan said. "I would love to continue as the head football coach. However, there are conditions that exist that make that impossible at this time. The turmoil and uncertainty that exists in the Manatee County School District has impacted my health to the extent that I cannot perform as head football coach at a level of excellence the Manatee players and fans expect and deserve."
Kinnan missed the entire spring, including the Hurricanes spring game against Haines City, for health reasons.
"Any coach always enjoys competing against the best and that is the way we always felt playing Manatee," said Plant head coach Robert Weiner, whose Panthers defeated Manatee for the Class 5A state championship in 2009. “Joe Kinnan always had his teams ready to play for the big moments and the everyday grind. As competitors we knew we had to continually raise our preparedness and level of play to even be in the battle.
“All of my dealing with Joe have been first class, and I have enjoyed the times we have lined up against each other."
Kinnan has been on medical leave since December when Manatee County School District Superintendent Rick Mills recommended Kinnan be suspended from his duties as athletic director after the FHSAA fined the Hurricanes baseball program $13,000 for financial misconduct.
Montgomery said the program has been preparing for Kinnan's indefinite departure for quite some time. He said he plans to open up the job nationally by next week, but will also consider internal candidates.
"We are going to try to move fairly quickly," Montgomery said. "My goal with this is we're going to try to make sure the person that's in place is 100 percent the best fit for this program. This is not your typical high school football program and it has to be led by somebody that wants to continue the excellence on the field and in the classroom and getting our student athletes recruited and promoted the same way Joe has. We have a couple of people that we are already laying the ground work to get to talk to."