HONOLULU — Darren Vorderbruegge sensed it was time for something new.
The longtime Hawaii Pacific University men’s basketball coach and former HPU athletic director will step down in the coming weeks to take a position at a church in Fresno, Calif., he told Spectrum News on Thursday night.
He and his wife, Amy, will relocate this summer for the executive pastor position with CrossCity Christian Church, which is run by a friend.
“There comes a time in our life personally that we kind of wanted to do something different,” Vorderbruegge said. “And that’s a really tough decision, because I still love basketball and have a passion for helping young men grow and learn lessons through sports.”
After considerable struggles for the Sharks the last few years, he finished with a 15-year record of 179-218. Vorderbruegge, however, leaves with the seventh-most wins of any collegiate men's basketball head coach in Hawaii.
Leadership of the program falls in the interim to his associate head coach, Jesse Nakanishi, though said he will still help with spring workouts.
Nakanishi, who has experience on staffs at Division I programs Seattle University and Hawaii, desires the position and Vorderbruegge voiced strong confidence in him to do it.
“I have no doubt that Jesse is ready and would do a terrific job. It’s not my call but I do trust the university that they’ll do what’s best for HPU basketball,” Vorderbruegge said.
Vorderbruegge first arrived at HPU in 2006 as an assistant coach from Northwest Missouri State and with 20 years coaching high school and college under his belt to lead the then-Sea Warriors. But soon after his arrival, the HPU athletic director left and he was thrust into that position, too.
For two years he did both jobs until letting go of basketball in 2008 to be just the AD, a position he held for eight years until Vince Baldemor’s arrival. Still, Vorderbruegge had an outsized role within the athletic department.
His absence from basketball was not long; he took the whistle again in 2010. The program enjoyed its best run of success under Vorderbruegge in a five-year stretch of winning seasons between 2013-14 and 2017-18, highlighted by a 29-3 season in 2016-17 that featured PacWest regular season and tournament championships. The program also won its first NCAA Tournament game that year and Vorderbruegge earned a national coach of the year honor.
The last five years have been lean, however, coupled with school-mandated scholarship reductions for the entire HPU athletics program. Over that period, HPU was 35-87.
“I believe our success has been correlated with that,” Vorderbruegge said. “I know the university is working hard to build that back up. It has their attention and I’ve seen that.”
HPU went 10-18 (6-14 PacWest) this past season. Vorderbruegge lamented a number of close losses; he chalked that up to a lack of depth.
Vorderbruegge was adamant that he was not shown the door by HPU administration that includes athletic director Debbie Snell.
“I haven’t felt any pressure at all,” Vorderbruegge said, adding that his decision was a surprise to Snell.
He noted the team had a program-record grade-point average of 3.45 in the fall semester, and HPU won a national community engagement award.
“A lot of water under the bridge, but the thing I’m most proud of is…we just had good people,” Vorderbruegge said. “Good young men who got their degrees and learned life lessons through basketball.”
Vorderbruegge concurrently coached the HPU men’s and women’s programs in 2021-22 when women’s coach Reid Takatsuka was suspended and eventually dismissed.
Brian McInnis covers the state's sports scene for Spectrum News Hawaii. He can be reached at brian.mcinnis@charter.com.