Boys & Girls football coach Barry O’Connor was dismissed from the team by school administrators this week, the seventh-year head man confirmed with The Post on Thursday.
Multiple sources said O’Connor received an unsatisfactory rating by administrators, who chose not to retain him as coach.
O’Connor would not comment further on the situation. He said his teaching job would be intact and he said he assumes Clive Harding, his top assistant for five years, will take over head coaching duties.
Harding said that is not a done deal and he has a meeting Friday with principal Bernard Gassaway, who has drawn headlines recently for taking a hard-line stance with athletics.
Harding, who guided the team during a five-team scrimmage at home Thursday, said he had yet to tell the team about O’Connor’s firing. O’Connor was in attendance at the scrimmage, sitting high up in the bleachers in a red Kangaroos shirt.
Harding would not comment directly on what transpired with the school and his now former head coach.
“It was basically an administrative decision, the principal’s decision,” said Harding, who is a retired NYPD officer and a substitute teacher at Boys & Girls. “A lot of changes are going on in the building.”
Department of Education spokesperson Marge Feinberg said, “This is a personnel matter and was handled at the school.”
Multiple sources, though, said O’Connor received a “U” rating. Rating a teacher unsatisfactory is typically the first step toward removing him from the school system.
On the field, there is no doubting O’Connor’s success. He was 32-29 at Boys & Girls with a trip to the PSAL City Championship division semifinals in 2009. His star the past few years, Wilbert Lee, is playing at UConn.
When O’Connor, who previously coached at the school, took over in 2004, the Kangaroos had been a middling, lower-level team.
O’Connor was involved in controversy last year when he and Harding were ejected from a game against Campus Magnet for arguing a two-point conversion call. During a wild scene, referees called the game early and Boys & Girls volunteer assistant, Dwayne Miller, mooned Campus Magnet fans. Miller was let go, and O’Connor and Harding served separate, one-game suspensions.
With the potential to be one of the PSAL’s top teams again, Boys & Girls will try to move on from a tough situation, Harding said.
“The timing is kind of weird, but one of the things we’ve said is we’re trying to build a program,” said Harding, who starred at Lincoln and was an assistant at Sheepshead Bay for 13 years. “If one guy is missing, somebody else can jump in and get it done. The coaching staff has been together five years. I’ve been here five years. We’ve got a lot of good, young coaches.”