Western Head Coach Sonny Hansley Calls It A Career After 40+ Years
Coach Hansley has a 570-377 record in twenty-eight years of coaching in Broward.
Western Head Coach Sonny Hansley knew that the end was coming, he just didn’t know exactly when. The question of when came Monday morning when Hansley spoke to school officials and informed them he would be retiring from coaching.
Hansley has been one of the most influential coaches in Broward County over the past twenty-eight years. The Western coach began his forty-plus-year coaching career as an assistant in Massachusetts, and then spent nineteen years as the Head Coach of Nova Southeastern University.
After leaving the college ranks, Hansley took the head coaching job at Plantation High School, where he spent four years. The last five years of his coaching career have been spent with the Wildcats.
“The timing is right to turn the program over to someone else,” said Hansley, when speaking of his decision to call it a career.
This season, the Wildcats finished 10-10. Overall, Hansley compiled a 570-377 record as a head coach at the college and high school level in Broward. Coach Hansley was inducted into the Nova Southeastern Hall of Fame back in 2007.
As news of his retirement traveled across the county, former players had already started to look back on what was a historic coaching career.
“The greatest accomplishment a coach can achieve is not how many district titles or players drafted, but actually being respected by his peers,” said Joe Giummule, a former player of Hansley’s at Nova Southeastern and the current Head Coach at South Broward. “Coach Hansley has been one of the most respected coaches in South Florida for over twenty-five years. His presence on the field will be missed but not forgotten by his former players, parents, and the coaching community.”
2 Responses to “Western Head Coach Sonny Hansley Calls It A Career After 40+ Years”
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I have known sonny since 99 when he started giving hitting lessons to my son. He was very intrumental in my sons success in high school and now college. My son had the pleasure of having him as his coach at western as well. I was also an assistant/jv coach with him at western for the 09 and 10 seasons. It was an awesome two years and i only left to spend more time with my youngest kids and teach them the game as well. Unless you coach at that level you dont know the time required, and its not even close to the compensation given, that goes into being a head coach. Sonny is a class act all the way who played by the rules and didnt rape and recruit from other schools like some others out there. Enjoy the retirement sonny, you deserve it.
We’ll miss ya Sonny! Another, not even great coach like Joe says in the article, but Broward is going to start losing lots of good ole coaches that are just flat out good people, getting sick of how difficult it is becoming and almost impossible to coach – yet another coach already gone that represents his school & county very well, and will be missed by many players don’t get a chance to play for him and Moss either! Western’s a nice job opened up tho fellas!