John Truhan steps down as Red Bank girls basketball coach after 8 seasons

Red Bank girls basketball coach John Truhan, who crossed 450 career wins this past season and led the Bucs to their most sustained success since the 1990s, told Shore Sports Insider on Wednesday night that he has resigned as head coach after eight seasons.

Truhan, who is a math teacher at Central Regional, said he is not retiring from teaching and coaching. He declined further comment.

Red Bank won 19 games and finished ranked No. 8 in the Shore Conference in the final Shore Sports Insider Top 10 this past season. The Bucs won the WOBM Christmas Classic title over the holidays and reached their first NJSIAA sectional final since 1998 this past season before falling to Neptune in the Central Jersey Group 3 championship game.

Truhan is a Shore Conference fixture and N.J. State Coaches Hall of Fame inductee who is the rare coach to have record-setting success at four different public school programs. Red Bank is the third different team he has led to an NJSIAA sectional final. He also led the Bucs to a pair of division titles.

In February, he passed the 450-win milestone for his career by beating a Middletown South team coached by longtime friend and fellow Hall of Famer Tom Brennan, who retired from his stellar career at the end of this past season. Truhan has 459 wins over 26 seasons across four programs.

He began his high school coaching career at Toms River South in 1997 and led the Indians to the South Jersey Group 3 title and a berth in the Group 3 final in 2001 for the first time in school history.

He then turned Colts Neck into a state power after taking over the Cougars in 2003, winning the program’s only Shore Conference Tournament title in 2008, the NJSIAA Group 4 title in 2009 and securing a berth in the championship game of the Tournament of Champions.

In 2009, he coached at Central Regional near his home in Bayville, which he led to three division titles and two trips to the sectional semifinals. The Toms River North graduate then coached at Caldwell University before being hired by Red Bank in 2017.

Scott Stump is a freelance reporter, newsletter writer and editor who first started covering Shore Conference football in 1999 and has covered basketball, wrestling, baseball and seemingly every other Shore Conference sport at some point. 

You can contact him at [email protected]