Courtesy photo Former Bishop Guertin football coach Tony Johnson is back coaching in New Hampshire, just hired as the new Bishop Brady head coach.

The architect of the Bishop Guertin High School football dynasty is back.

Well, back to coaching New Hampshire high school football, that is.

No, former BG athletic director and football coach Tony Johnson, who created a dynasty in two sports at the school, won’t be returning to the Cardinals. Instead, he’ll be serving another Bishop, hired as the new head football coach at Bishop Brady High School in Concord. Johnson said he also expects to have a teaching position at the school.

Johnson has spent the last eight years at Worcester Academy as the head coach for football, skiing and track and field.

A former Guertin football standout himself from the late 1970s, Johnson built a football dynasty in 17 years at BG, winning six Division II titles in 10 championship game appearances. He coached the Cardinals to a combined 11 indoor-outdoor girls state track titles.

Johnson stepped down at Worcester after an 0-6 2019 season. He has a home in Jackson he built two years ago but expects to move to Concord.

“I was looking at a lot of different things,” Johnson said, “from teaching, AD, lot of things. I enjoyed the fundraising aspect of everything. So I was looking at a lot of different things, including the business world.

“This thing came up quickly. Brady’s a great school, academically it’s a phenomenal school. It’s small, but it’s a great opportunity for me.”

Brady last year went 4-3 in Division IV, and the Green Giants last title came in 2006, the second of back-to-back titles in what was then Division V. They also last appeared in a championship game in 2009.

“Brady’s one of those programs that kind of reminds me of Guertin when I first got to Guertin (in 1994),” Johnson said. “It’s had some success, numbers are low, field space is limited, we have to do a little bit of work in the infrastructure and get everybody (at Brady) excited about football again.”

Johnson was never able to repeat the success he enjoyed at Guertin on the prep school level. He went 20-41 in eight seasons at Worcester, with two winning campaigns. He said the game had been de-emphasized at the school as he had just 19 players on the roster at the end of the season last year, and couldn’t compete with the larger prep schools.

“Prep school football is at a crossroads,” he said, “because of the cost of the education. Parochial school costs are a third of what it is at prep schools. You need a minimum of 35 kids, and that means you’re looking at players who need financial assistance. A lot of the schools are coming to a point where they’re either dropping the program, or going to seven-man football. It was difficult. It was a struggle.”

And, said Johnson, he was outmatched against teams that had more Division I prospects, schools that could out-recruit him nationwide because “They had more money and better resources.”

“You’re playing against a Cheshire or a Choate or a Deerfield who were going to roll out eight or nine Division I ballplayers and I only had two,” he said. “That was a problem.”

Johnson said he’s taking the job long term, so if there is not a season in 2020 due to the pandemic, he’ll still coach Brady in 2021. He has a Zoom meeting scheduled with his players on Friday night.

“At this point right now you’re just preparing,” he said. “You’ve got to prepare, and you’ve got to assume there’s going to be something. … I want to make sure the kids are doing what they should be doing to prepare.”

One thing Johnson wants from his players is what he wanted at Guertin – for them to play multiple sports.

“I still want kids to play multiple sports,” he said. “I want them to take advantage of every opportunity they can. They can live in the weight room, but I’d rather have them get another sport and get themselves faster.”

In that sense, Johnson said he will take the ingredients that led to success at BG and implement them at Brady.

“When you think about it, how many kids are you going to coach that are going to make money playing a sport?” he said. “Almost nobody. So why are you restricting these kids from playing another sport? It’s that type of stuff, I’m going to canvas other programs.”

Johnson last coached in New Hampshire in the 2014 CHaD All-Star game. “It’s good to be back in New Hampshire,” he said. “I missed it.”

He’ll continue his priority for speed and flexibility; at Worcester, he had his teams do yoga once a week.

“I still have the same philosophy,” he said. “I haven’t changed a bit.

“Kids are kids, football is football. I love working with the kids, I’m passionate about coaching the kids, the opportunity to mentor, to lead these kids. It’s always been a passion. It hasn’t left me.”

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