Mission San Jose fires boys basketball coach after historic season

Mission San Jose boys basketball coach Mike Kenney was fired on Monday.

He says he still doesn't know why.

Four months after leading MSJ to a historic playoff run, Kenney says he is out and officials at the Fremont school won’t explain why they are going in a different direction.

Kenney, who is not a teacher at the school, said he was fired by principal Amy Perez shortly before a summer basketball practice at the school. When he asked why he was being dismissed, he said she could not tell him, leaning on district policy.

When reached for comment, Perez said the school does not comment on personnel decisions.

"Coach Kenney has been a dedicated and valued member of our athletic community, and the Mission San Jose community is deeply appreciative of his commitment to our student athletes and to the boys’ basketball program," Perez said in a statement to the Bay Area News Group. "As a matter of standard practice, coaching positions are filled through a hiring process that takes place before each season begins. Boys’ basketball is a winter sport, and as such, decisions will be made after the school year begins.

"Because personnel matters are confidential, the District is unable to comment on specific individuals or employment-related decisions."

Kenney said he thought Monday's meeting was a routine check-in with Perez, and was not expecting to be let go.

After he heard the news, he went back into the gym, told his team and walked out.

Now, the boys basketball coach who led the Warriors to their first section title in school history this season and came within one game of a state championship appearance is out of a job.

"To fire someone, it's got to be something outrageous and frankly I don't know what it is," Kenney told the Bay Area News Group in a phone interview on Tuesday. "It pissed me off because they could have just emailed me. They could have texted me, and I would have been just fine, but I had to go all the way in there, sit and wait to talk."

The firing is surprising given that Kenney led one of the worst public school boys basketball programs in the Bay Area to heights it has never seen before.

"I couldn't believe it," assistant coach Jim Moran said of Kenney's firing. "During our tenure there, we’ve made the NCS playoffs three times, and it took a lot of work to get there because we don’t have the same talent level as a lot of the other schools do."

Moran, who has been on Kenney's staff for years, said the school has not reached out to him regarding his job status.

MSJ has garnered a reputation as one of the elite academic public schools in the country, but has not been the sports powerhouse it once was in the 1980s and 1990s. The Fremont school cut its football program after the 2015 season and has struggled to put out successful teams in sports such as basketball, baseball and softball.

Kenney's run with MSJ captivated the high school basketball community as the team was made up of players who considered themselves "nerds." The team went 22-11 – its best season in at least 22 years – and upset the likes of San Marin and Rancho Cotate to win a North Coast Section Division IV title.

Moran said the administration never got behind the basketball program until the Warriors made their NCS title run.

"The support we got from the school, to me, only really occurred once we got into the NCS championship and won," Moran said. "Then everybody was our best friend."

Kenney said he doesn’t know the official reason for his dismissal, but he has a hunch.

During the season, Kenney said he asked a player to swap out his leggings before a game because they didn’t match what the rest of the team was wearing – a longstanding dress code for MSJ under the stoic coach. The player’s mother confronted Kenney about it afterward, and Kenney believes that complaint may have made its way to school administration.

According to Kenney, the issue was resolved shortly after and he didn't think anything of it until he was fired yesterday. But Kenney stressed that the leggings incident was not cited as a reason for his firing because no reason was given to him at all.

"It's embarrassing,” Kenney said. "I'm sitting here thinking there must be something else that I don’t know about. … I just can’t believe I’m the one guy that got fired after the year we had."

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This story was originally published June 9, 2026 at 4:21 PM.