In a tumultuous offseason for Redwood Empire football, the biggest domino officially fell Thursday. Paul Cronin, who coached Cardinal Newman for 14 seasons and made the program the strongest in the area for the bulk of that time, told his players he was leaving the school to coach at Windsor High.
It wasn’t an easy conversation.
“You always pick a kid, right?” Cronin said. “You think, ‘I don’t want to leave this guy, or this guy.’ By the end of the list, you can’t leave. My wife knows how it goes. I really couldn’t even speak. You see all those faces and think, God, I love these kids. I knew Beau Barrington from the time he was 6 years old. Man, I really want to see this kid as a senior. And there are a lot of others.”
In 14 seasons at the helm, Cronin led the Cardinals to seven North Bay League championships or co-championships and five North Coast Section titles, including the most recent Division 4 banner. Twice Cronin’s teams made it to a CIF state championship game, losing to Oaks Christian in 2006 and St. Bonaventure in 2008.
The coach became synonymous with the team’s success as he paced the sidelines with a controlled intensity, calling in each play for his up-tempo offense.
“As a whole, I’m very blessed I got the chance to be around Cardinal Newman High School, Cardinal Newman football, the Cardinal Newman community,” Cronin said. “I’ll have great memories. I grew up there. When I got there I was 29; now I’m leaving at 43. That’s where my kids grew up. The first game I ever coached there, my daughter was born two days before. They announced it on the loudspeaker.”
Memories like those made it hard for Cronin to sever ties with the school.
And he did have chances. Cronin said he had more than one offer from schools in Southern California.
“We went to look and said, ‘You know what? This is not where we want to live,’ ” Cronin said. “And Newman is so special, you don’t want to go somewhere else.”
But now he is doing just that. Asked why, Cronin said it was an opportunity to put his family on more stable financial footing.
Though he didn’t elaborate, here’s a clue to what he might have meant.
In most of Cronin’s years at Cardinal Newman, the Catholic high school paid full tuition for the children of all faculty members. Three years ago, the administration announced it would pay only half of those tuition fees. Considering annual tuition is nearly $15,000 per year at Cardinal Newman, it was a substantial difference.
The Cronins have three children, all of whom currently attend St. Rose Catholic School, which is adjacent to Newman.
Anyway, Windsor is familiar territory. The Cronins live there. Paul’s first job out of college was teaching at Brooks Elementary School. He calls Steve Kramer, a teacher at Windsor High, “probably my first friend in life,” and has long associations with people like Travis Taylor, the current Jaguars boys basketball coach, and Donald Fletcher, the campus police officer.
Cronin’s change of address is the latest domino to fall in Sonoma County football.
Our editors found this article on this site using Google and regenerated it for our readers.
