Lake Norman High basketball coach Brandon Jolly stepping down

Lake Norman High boys basketball coach Brandon Jolly said coaching just wasn’t fun anymore. He said the feeling really hit him after he took the Wildcats to team camp earlier this summer.

He knew then he was going to resign.

Jolly told the Observer Monday night that he would not coach the basketball team anymore, but will remain at the school and coach golf. Jolly said he wanted to spend more time with his 8-year-old daughter, an aspiring swimmer, and his 5-year-old son, whom he coached in T-Ball.

Jolly coached junior varsity for five seasons at Lake Norman and took over the varsity team in 2007. His teams were 156-80 and won the N.C. 4A state championship in 2010. In 2014, Lake Norman was N.C. 4A runner-up. Jolly’s team won three conference championships.

“It’s something I’d been thinking about for awhile, no other reason,” he said. “I’ve been doing it for 14 years...and I’m not willing to do the year-round thing that basketball requires. I did spring workouts and took them to team camp and I wasn’t into it. I told my team and my parents after we got back that I was going to step down. I told them it wasn’t fair to them.”

This story was originally published August 8, 2016 at 10:19 PM with the headline "Lake Norman High basketball coach Brandon Jolly stepping down."