Breaking: Mater Dei head football coach Bruce Rollinson will return for 2022 season

After a former football player filed a lawsuit against Mater Dei last November, Rollinson's future was in question.

Bruce Rollinson will be back as Mater Dei's head football coach this fall, according to school athletic director Kevin Kiernan. 

"We have made no changes to the Head Coaching position," Kiernan said in an email. 

When asked if Rollinson will coach this upcoming season, Kiernan responded: "correct."

Last season Mater Dei finished 12-0 winning the Division 1 Southern Section championship and the state Open Division championship. 

Three days before Mater Dei played Servite in the Southern Section Division 1 championship game on Nov. 26, the OC Register released a report detailing a February 2021 locker room fight at Mater Dei High School between two football players that started as "Bodies" and led the Santa Ana Police Department to recommend that the District Attorney's Office file felony battery charges against one of the players.

According to the story, Bodies are "an initiation or hazing ritual where players punch each other in the torso between the hips and shoulders until one of them surrenders." In this case, the fight reportedly went too far, with one player getting punched several times in the face.

The two players are identified in the story as Player 1 and Player 2.

The Orange County District Attorney's Office views the altercation as "mutual combat" and does not intend to pursue criminal charges.

According to the OC Register, "Player 1’s family filed a lawsuit against Mater Dei High School and the Roman Catholic Diocese of Orange in Orange County Superior Court on Tuesday, Nov. 23, 2021. The suit alleges negligence, negligence per se-hazing in violation of the California penal code, negligent failure to warn, train or educate, intentional infliction of emotional distress."

Player 2 was on Mater Dei's 2021 team, according to the OC Register. 

On Jan. 1, Mater Dei High School president Father Walter Jenkins resigned. According to the OC Register his resignation was due to the "tensions between Jenkins and longtime Mater Dei head football coach Bruce Rollinson and his supporters." 

On Jan. 7, Mater Dei hired Michael Brennan as the school's next president.