![\"\"](\"http:\/\/thelehighacresgazette.com\/news\/wp-content\/uploads\/2016\/02\/Dawn-McNew-300x225.jpg\" "\\"Dawn")
News-Press is reporting that Dawn McNew, the Lehigh Senior High boys basketball coach who was named Class 6A coach of the year\u00a0by the Florida Association of Basketball Coaches last season, resigned from the position on Wednesday, a Lee County School District\u00a0spokeswoman confirmed early\u00a0Thursday.<\/p>\n
It came just a week after\u00a0Lehigh athletic director Dan Pallante also\u00a0resigned on Feb. 18. Pallante, a teacher and coach for 28 years before he took the job at Lehigh,\u00a0is currently the\u00a0assistant director of football operations at the\u00a0University of Maryland.<\/p>\n
“I got a great opportunity,” said Pallante, whose last day at Lehigh was Friday.\u00a0“I couldn’t pass it up. It’s always been my eventual goal to try to work at\u00a0the college level and DJ Durkin (the University of Maryland head football coach)\u00a0had a football job there. I have a very strong relationship with him.”<\/p>\n
McNew’s resignation followed a tumultuous period for the program, which endured a five-day suspension late in the basketball season after an explicit rap video was found to be produced on school grounds. McNew and her two paid assistants, Ryan Lewis and Ed Hearyman, were suspended along with nine members of the Lehigh basketball team over the course of two games in the District 6A-11 playoffs. McNew and her coaching staff were also put on an indefinite personnel standards inquiry.<\/p>\n
After McNew hired a lawyer to help her reinstatement to the program, she was back on the court before the start of the Region 6A-3 quarterfinals, where she coached her\u00a0team’s last game of the season, a 68-66 loss at the buzzer to Golden Gate.<\/p>\n
A year prior, McNew led the Lightning to one of its best seasons in school history, going 27-2 before losing in the Region 6A-3 finals to Tampa Jefferson.<\/p>\n
McNew was 92-40 with the Lightning over five seasons, leading the team to two 20-win seasons and back-to-back appearances in the Region 6A-3 finals from 2014-15. Over the past four seasons, her teams lost no less than eight games.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"
News-Press is reporting that Dawn McNew, the Lehigh Senior High boys basketball coach who was named Class 6A coach of the year\u00a0by the Florida Association of Basketball Coaches last season,… <\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":8,"featured_media":38780,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[57,32],"tags":[],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/thelehighacresgazette.com\/news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/38973"}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/thelehighacresgazette.com\/news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/thelehighacresgazette.com\/news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/thelehighacresgazette.com\/news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/8"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/thelehighacresgazette.com\/news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=38973"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/thelehighacresgazette.com\/news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/38973\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/thelehighacresgazette.com\/news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/38780"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/thelehighacresgazette.com\/news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=38973"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/thelehighacresgazette.com\/news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=38973"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/thelehighacresgazette.com\/news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=38973"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}