Saint Stephen's Hires Creneti As New Football Coach

Tod Creneti is used to building up football programs. Soon, he'll have that chance at .

Creneti, 41, was hired Tuesday as the Falcons' new head football coach and assistant athletic director. Next month, he'll take over over the coaching reins from Stan Brown, who was relieved of his duties in December, the school said.

Creneti, who currently coaches football at St. Petersburg Catholic but resides with his wife and two daughters in Parrish, will inherit a fledgling Falcons program in its sixth year of existence.

"I'm excited to be in a community where I'd be teaching, working and living," Creneti said.

A chance meeting with Head of School Jan Pullen at a leadership development talk at the University of Pennsylvania last year put Saint Stephen's on his radar as a place to send his daughters, ages 6 and 8. While touring the campus a few months ago, Pullen indicated to Creneti he might be a good fit for the vacant coaching position.

"The more we walked around and talked with people, I was interested in the place," Creneti said. "Since then it's just been exciting."

The Philadelphia native, who played collegiately at Gettysburg College in Pennsylvania in the early 1990s, has been coaching for 19 years — "every year since I got out of college," he said.

His career has included work as a youth minister and a five-year stint as offensive coordinator at St. Pete Lakewood, plus head coaching stops at Melbourne Central Catholic and the past four seasons at St. Pete Catholic, where he also served as assistant AD.

In both head coaching jobs, Creneti inherited programs that had been placed on probation by the FHSAA and helped improve their images. Now, he'll step into a situation where the relatively new Saint Stephen's program has experienced its share of growing pains, including a 2-8 record in 2010.

"To some degree I'm attracted to situations where I can come in and help develop a program," said Creneti.

Saint Stephen's Athletic Director Charles Williamson said he sifted through more than 80 applicants from around the country before selecting Creneti.

"We like his passion for football, his passion for life and the aura around him," Williamson said. "We want someone who's going to grab a hold of this program and continue to move it forward."

Williamson said one of Creneti's tasks will be getting younger students at the school — which teaches students from pre-kindergarten to 12th grade — interested in youth football as a way to help build up the varsity program.

"We would like to be competitive," Williamson said. "We're starting from the ground up again."

The work begins April 4, Creneti's first day on the job.