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Former St. Mary’s AD, football coach will assist son at Tamalpais High 

Former St. Mary’s athletic director and football coach Dan Shaughnessy announced his retirement from the school early last year. But a special coaching opportunity has pulled him out of the rocking chair and back onto the field. 

Shaughessy will coach offensive linemen and linebackers next year at Tamalpais High in Mill Valley. What made the job so tempting to the 65-year-old was the fact that his son, Jake, will be the head coach. It will be the younger Shaughnessy’s first head coaching job. 

“It has always been a lifetime dream,” said the elder Shaughnessy about coaching on the same staff as his son. “It’s going to be fun. It’s really exciting.”  

The move is actually a departure from the original plan, as Dan Shaughnessy was supposed to join his son at Marin Catholic, where Jake was an assistant coach last year. But Jake was hired by Tamalpais in June, and dad decided to tag along. 

Shaughnessy may be the most decorated assistant coach in the state next year. As a head coach at three different schools (St. Mary’s, Salesian and Christian Brothers in Sacramento), he owns 16 league championships and 14 North Coast Section playoff appearances, including one last year, with an overall record of 252-114-6. His last run at St. Mary’s, which began in 1985, was his third stint with the school from which he graduated in 1953. Shaughnessy said his proudest achievement was taking the Panthers to the playoffs for the first time in 1987. The 1991 team finished third in California, losing to No. 1 Alhambra, 33-31, in the playoffs. 

Shaughnessy was also an assistant coach at the University of San Francisco and Santa Ana Junior College in the 1960s. 

His comments early in the year indicated that he was indeed considering a part-time coaching job, although his enthusiasm for the athletic director’s role had waned. 

“I’m just retiring from the everyday grind, the administrative end of it,” he said in January. “I think it is time to go... So I’m going to coach, but I just won’t coach here.” 

With Shaughnessy going to work under his son, it will be a reversal from Jake’s stint coaching the freshman team and assisting his dad with the varsity squad while he was a student at Cal. 

Shaughnessy has been replaced both in the athletic chair and on the football field at St. Mary’s by Jay Lawson.