Photo Credits: Scott Faytok NJ Advanced Media
Brian Dunn has had a lot of success as the head football coach at Old Tappan High School, and it turns out he’s also pretty good at coaching girls basketball too.
Dunn, who is in his 27th season as the head girls basketball coach, celebrated his 500th career victory on Thursday night with a 47-31 victory over Ridgewood. He now joins a host of other coaches who have reached the milestone, including Chatham’s Joe Gaba, who won his 500th game on Dec. 14.
“All it means is that I’m getting older, to be honest. It feels good to know that I’ve been able to last this long (coaching), I love it,”
Dunn said. “The most important part is it’s meant a lot of relationships developed over a long period of time, so that’s the biggest part of it.
“People say your job isn’t who you are, but it’s kind of who I have been for a long time. I love the place, it’s a great place to work, everybody’s been good to me for a long time. I live right there in the community so it’s nice that I still have all of the connections and see all the people around, former players and parents and all that, so that part is always special. It didn’t take getting to a certain game to make that part special though.”
Dunn coached his very first season at Pascack Hills before moving over to Old Tappan, which is ranked No. 19 in the NJ.com Top 20, and he has been there ever since, winning two Group 3 titles with the Golden Knights in 2016 and 2018.
“Five hundred is even more impressive when you consider the strength of schedule he seeks every year within our league and through independent games,” Old Tappan assistant coach Christine Massaro said. “He could pad his stats and have many more wins if he sought up cupcake games, but he wants to challenge our team and see where we stack up and what we need to improve on. By doing that and maybe taking some tough early season losses, he ensures that the team is battle tested. He’s never about himself or his stats, he sets the tone for a team-first mentality. And what’s more, he always sets the bar at 20 wins at minimum, because that would mean you went deep in counties and state tournament. I know personally from playing for him four years and coaching with him for 19 seasons now. He sets the bar high for Old Tappan basketball.”
Coaching two sports isn’t an easy task, especially two sports that are completely different from each other and require a lot of work, before, during and after the season itself. But Dunn doesn’t shy away from the challenges of coaching two sports in back-to-back seasons, and instead embraces it.
“It’s hard, it’s getting harder every year just from being able to handle all of the things that are required year-round, but I love it, it keeps me busy,” Dunn said. “If I didn’t enjoy it I’d give up one or the other, but I still love doing both. I love coaching two completely different sports, boys and girls, not that I coach them any different, coach them both the same as athletes, but they’re two different animals and I enjoy both of them.”
The win over Ridgewood on Thursday night was the fifth-straight win of the season for the Golden Knights, which also has victories over Holy Angels, Ramapo, Paramus Catholic and Wayne Valley. Old Tappan has held its opponents to an average of 38 points per game so far and are currently atop the Big North National Division.
Senior twins Layla Giordano (16 ppg.) and Maya Giordano (11.8 ppg) lead the team, while Alivia Badurina (5.8 ppg.), Mia Derrico (6.8 ppg.) and Sienna Drullinsky (4.2 ppg.) have also contributed.
“That’s the biggest thing I’m happy about, we played five games in eight days to start the season, and I’ve never done that before in 27 years,” Dunn said. “So that was a grind and I’m really proud of our kids. We’re playing some young kids, some young guards but I have these two twins, the Giordano kids, we always have a shot against anybody with them on the floor, so I’m proud of those kids. Just having them out there and starting the season off the way we did is great, but being around them every day makes the job so fun.”
