A ‘local celebrity,’ St. Patrick track and field coach retires after a 40-year career

Stan Dellenger’s career began as many do: deep in the boggy swamps of Louisiana.

Before the rings, before the coaching career that spanned four decades and before St. Patrick Catholic High School even existed, Dellenger was a wide receiver at Southern Miss looking for a job in the real world.

He had heard about an opening for a football assistant job in Morgan City, Louisiana, at Central Catholic that would also allow to coach the track team. It was 1981 and maps weren’t quite as accessible as they are today.

“I went to the gas station and picked up a map,” Dellenger told the Sun Herald. “A Louisiana map. I’m looking at it and I realize it’s not by New Orleans, it’s not by Baton Rouge. It’s about an hour and a half south of Baton Rouge. I said ‘this ain’t nothing but swamp and alligators.’”

But it was there he connected with a Bay St. Louis native and head football coach Mike Peterson, who brought Dellenger with him to Pope John Paul High School in Slidell. There, Dellenger became a defensive coordinator and eventually the head coach.

That led the Biloxi-native back to the Mississippi Coast, where he worked at both Mercy Cross and St. Stanislaus.

Upon his return home, ‘Coach Dell’ fell in love with special teams and began to hone in on his craft, even shedding coaching roles with the offense and defense.

He was the special teams coordinator at St. Stanislaus when the Rock-a-Chaws won their first and only state football title in 2009.

Dellenger had one more coaching change coming and it was one he quickly embraced as his last. He “found his love” at St. Patrick.

“I really didn’t think I was going to stay (at St. Patrick) that long,” Dellenger said. “I thought I was going to stay maybe two, three years at the most and then go back to St. Stanislaus. Well it didn’t happen... This is it, this is where God wants me to be and this is where I need to be.”

Dellenger took over a track and field program that had just three coaches on staff. By the end of his tenure, St. Patrick had eight track coaches and four state championships.

Those championships have all come since 2018 and Coach Dell credits his coaching staff for every one of them.

“I have a philosophy of coaching that’s two-and-a-half pages long,” Dellenger said. “I made it 30 years ago. I always, I always put my coaching staff ahead of me. I was very blessed and I knew what I wanted, I knew my objective. I had to have a bigger staff to get more individual work for these kids on the track team.”

That philosophy developed champions at St. Patrick. The girl’s track team broke through with a title in 2018 and followed up with more in 2019 and 2021. The boy’s won their first championship in 2021.

His coaching style resonated with his athletes. According to his son, Sports Illustrated reporter Ross Dellenger, he has the ability to be both a teacher and a friend.

“My dad has the ability to turn it off and on,” Ross said. “He can be a close friend or buddy, in a way, to players and students while also being the typical kind of disciplinarian type. He has a way with people, a way to treat people that I think young people appreciate and learn from.”

Dellenger’s impact on his former students and coaching colleagues was felt at a recent retirement party where 150 people showed up. Guests included past athletes and friends from St. Patrick all the way back to his days at Central Catholic.

Even in public, the Dellenger family can’t escape the lives that were positively impacted by Coach Dell.

“When I go back home and we go to a restaurant, it’s crazy to me how many people come up to him and recognize him and say hello,” Ross said. “It’s almost like a joke with my family that he’s this local celebrity.”

After both of his track teams won a title in 2021, Dellenger thought that would be a good time to call it quits. The only problem was that he was only 64 years old. Dellenger had made a promise to his father he’d coach until he was 65.

Dellenger turned 65 in May and entered the promised land of retirement following a 2022 season that saw his boy’s team with 3A state runner-ups.