John Rodenberg’s teams won 25 of the 27 games he coached at Roncalli.
Daily Journal file photo
John Rodenberg firmly believed his stint as football coach at Roncalli High School would last longer than two seasons.
However, strange things can happen when opportunity knocks.
Rodenberg, who led the Royals to a 25-2 record and the program’s 10th state championship with a Class 4A title in 2020, resigned on Monday to become football coach at Indian Hill, a Cincinnati high school with an enrollment of 640 students that competes in the eight-school Cincinnati Hills League.
A Cincy native who graduated from LaSalle High School in the early 1980s, Rodenberg, 57, will continue to teach physical education at Roncalli for the remainder of the 2021-22 school year.
“I definitely wanted to get back to Cincinnati before I retired, but didn’t have a timetable,” Rodenberg said. “It’s more about the opportunity than anything else. It kind of came out of the blue, and I realized it was a good opportunity.
“Indian Hills has good tradition, it’s a school you can win at, and, financially, it’s a situation that will be good for our family.”
Rodenberg accomplished a great deal in his short tenure with the Royals, including a school-record 24-game win streak. He exits Roncalli with the highest win percentage of the nine men who have been head football coach there (92.6%), and he is one of four to hoist the state championship trophy, joining Bill Kuntz (1985), Bill Sylvester (1988) and career wins leader Bruce Scifres (1993-94, 1999, 2002-04 and 2016).
Furthermore, Rodenberg is unique in winning state championships in three different states, having taken Covington Catholic to Kentucky’s 3A championship in 2006 and Cincinnati Moeller to Ohio Division I titles in 2012 and 2013.
Rodenberg credits the Roncalli tradition for the success the Royals achieved in his time there.
“Roncalli is all about winning, they treated me well and I loved the players,” Rodenberg said. “They bought in, worked hard and were all about tradition. They didn’t win because of me. The players just bought into my vision.
“(Leaving) is extremely difficult, but I assured them I would be here to help out in any way I can.”
Rodenberg’s latest career move has Roncalli athletic director David Lauck searching for the man who will become the school’s fourth head coach in seven seasons.
Rodenberg was hired by Roncalli in February 2020 after two seasons as head coach at Lawrence Central. His desire to return to a parochial program coincided with former Roncalli coach Scott Marsh, a Kentucky native, leaving to take a head coaching position at West Jessamine High School outside of Lexington.
March succeeded Scifres, who retired from coaching following the 2016 campaign.
“Our school and football program endured some challenging times for a couple of years,” Lauck said. “For football, we wanted a veteran coach, a Christian man with head coaching experience, and a background for establishing structure and discipline.
“Coach Rodenberg met those demands and went 25-2 in his two seasons. Moving forward, we will expect the same from our next head coach in terms of Christian faith, structure and discipline.”
