By MARK MOLINA | Staff Writer
After spending two seasons at Port Isabel, girl’s basketball coach and assistant track coach Hannah Burleson has decided to move on.
Burleson, who also spent the four years prior to coaching at Port Isabel as an assistant at UTRGV, put in her resignation early last week and said the decision to do so came down to family.
“Leaving was more of a personal, family decision,” Burleson said. “I want to be closer to family; I don’t have anybody else in the Rio Grande Valley. I’m still early in my career, and I’d like to build my career somewhere that is closer to family.”
Burleson went 31-34 in two years at Port Isabel and will return to the Corpus Christi/Coastal Bend area after finishing the school year with Port Isabel.
First-year Port Isabel athletic director Jason Strunk said losing Burleson is going to be tough on the school district, but he said neither he nor the district has any hard feelings about her decision.
“I’ve known (Burleson) since July and from Day 1, I had her identified as one of the best coaches on campus,” Strunk said. “She needs to do what she needs to do, and that’s going out and finding something closer to her family because that’s important to her. I support that 100 percent.
“She did a heck of a job here. I think potentially, down the road, she’s going to find herself being an athletic director somewhere; I think that highly of her. She’s great people and has great character. She worked her rear end off for these kids. The kids loved her, so she’s going to be hard to replace. I’m proud of the job she’s done here, and the next person who comes in and takes over is doing so with the program in good shape, so that’s the positive of it.”
Burleson resigned now to give the school district time to get a replacement in before the summertime.
Strunk said that process will begin and that the job likely will be posted “in the next day or two.”
Burleson thanked the Point Isabel Independent School District for the opportunity despite her coming in with only four years as a Division I assistant and no head coaching experience under her belt.
“I worked for Coach (Jaime) Infante first, and then obviously Coach Strunk. I learned a tremendous amount from both of them,” she said. “They both gave me the opportunity to run the program at Port Isabel as a head coach without any head coaching experience. I’m extremely grateful to them and (principal) Dr. William Roach, who was wonderful to work for. I also worked at the elementary and I thoroughly loved that.
“The kids worked hard and bought into the program,” Burleson added. “As a coach, that’s probably the best thing you can ask for. I felt like they would have gone through the wall for me, the program and what we stood for. Missing the people that I worked for and missing the kids is obviously one of the toughest things, not only in basketball, but I have runners in track who I have enjoyed coaching every day.”