Not so fast: One more Big Central hire, as new Dunellen AD Kyle Baach takes over Destroyers’ football program

Longtime Dunellen football coach Dave DeNapoli retired after the 2024 season – his 29th with the Destroyers – then handed the keys to veteran mentor Phlip McGuane before he retired as Coordinator of Athletics this past April.

McGuane held both roles for a few months but now has ceded them to Kyle Baach, a native of Basking Ridge, who will be a head coach for the first time.

Baach was living in South Carolina with his wife and young child when they decided they wanted to be back in Central Jersey and closer to their families, and he started looking for jobs. That’s when he saw a post about Dunellen.

Baach says while interviewing with the administration, he learned the football job could be on the table, as McGuane wasn’t sure he’d want to return. Eventually, that turned out to be the case, and Baach was hired for both positions.

McGuane, reached Friday, said “I think we have made a good move for athletics,” adding it was his idea.

“Bottom line is I did what I thought was best for the kids and the overall program, and the administration agreed.”

The 32-year-old Baach played at Ridge for Tony Mottola his freshman season, then Bill Tracy his final three, though he was injured his senior year.

After attending Coastal Carolina University – where he was a recruiting intern and assistant to the offensive coordinator and quarterbacks coach, but didn’t play – he spent a year under Tracy as an assistant in 2019, then moved back down to South Carolina where he coached at Carvers Bay in the town of Hemingway, about 30 miles west of Myrtle Beach, the alma mater of Clifton, Kwame, Robert and Clayton Geathers, all of whom reached the NFL.

McGuane’s Destroyers – one of the smallest programs in one of the smallest high schools in the state – went 0-9 last season and has lost 20 straight dating back to a first-round playoff loss in 2023, in which the team went 5-4 in the next to last season under DeNapoli.

Central Jersey Sports Radio broadcast that season’s opener, a convincing 18-7 home win over Dayton.

Click below to listen to new Dunellen Cooridnator of Athletics and football coach Kyle Baach talk with Central Jersey Sports Radio’s Mike Pavlichko: