SANTA ANA – After being president at Servite High School for 15 years, Mike Brennan found that being president at St. Anthony High in Long Beach was a soothing change of pace.

“Lower blood pressure,” Brennan said, laughing.

Servite, like every Orange County large private school, is populated by many pushy parents and demanding alumni. Success in sports can appear to be more important at such schools than success in academics. It can be a stressful life for administrators at those schools.

Six months into his St. Anthony tenure that began last summer …

“I received a phone call asking me if I’d be interested,” Brennan said.

Interested, that is, in becoming president at Mater Dei.

Brennan said goodbye to the comparatively tranquil time at St. Anthony to accept a high leadership role at Mater Dei, a school always in the news for its championship sports programs but lately in the headlines about an alleged hazing culture in its football program, an allegation that arose from an incident that led to a lawsuit that targets Mater Dei.

The lawsuit accuses Mater Dei and the Roman Catholic Diocese of Orange, with which Mater Dei is affiliated, of attempting to cover up an on-campus locker room incident in which a Mater Dei football player on Feb. 4, 2021, suffered a traumatic brain injury from a hazing game called “bodies” in which two players punch each other’s torsos until one of them surrenders. A video of the incident was recorded on a cell phone and has been viewed by the Orange County Register and other media groups.

The lawsuit was filed the week preceding Mater Dei’s win over St. John Bosco in the CIF Southern Section Division 1 championship game Nov. 26. Fr. Walter Jenkins, who became Mater Dei president in July, resigned the position Jan. 1.

Brennan was named Mater Dei president Jan. 7.

Why go from Servite, an all-boys Catholic school with its own high-profile football team and the pushy parents and demanding alumni, to the calm of St. Anthony and then back into the fire pit that is Mater Dei these days?

“I just felt a calling to come here,” Brennan said recently during an interview in the Mater Dei on-campus chapel. “My insides just said, ‘You may have the unique experience for what Mater Dei High School needs for this period of time.’ ”

Before his departure, Jenkins hired a Sacramento law firm, Van Dermyden Makus, to examine Mater Dei’s safety protocols and its athletics program.

Brennan said the law firm’s job is an “assessment” rather than an investigation. Brennan, and Mater Dei director of communications Allison Bergeron who attended the interview in the chapel, maintain that “investigation” applies only to the work of the Santa Ana Police Department, which recommended that the Orange County District Attorney’s office file charges, and the District Attorney’s office, which declined to file charges.

Since the DA’s decision other videos have surfaced of simulated sex acts and fighting in the Mater Dei locker room.

Brennan said there is no culture of hazing at Mater Dei and that the locker room incident is an isolated one.

“I think the school followed the process and the guidelines and protocols, (and) contacted the police department,” Brennan said. “They (school personnel) have been very honest with the police, they provided all the information and when the district attorney comes out and says, ‘I saw no indication of hazing and this was mutual combat,’ and that aligns exactly with what the school initially said … what they did was reaffirm what the school said. That’s why it goes more in the direction of an assessment and not an investigation because the investigation is done.”

Brennan said he has watched the video of the Feb. 4 locker room fight.

“It made me sad for both of the boys,” Brennan said. “You have one really nice boy who got inured, and a really nice boy who was part of the altercation. Even though I haven’t met the boys my hypothesis is that they’re probably two really great kids and they had an incident. It doesn’t remove the fact that they’re still really great kids. But now what happens is, that goes out on social media. So my prayer is that they’re OK.”

Brennan and Bergeron said it is Mater Dei’s intent that the assessment will be released to the media and public in full. That would require approval from the Diocese of Orange.

“What I will do is contact the Diocese to see exactly how the Diocese would like me to handle that,” Brennan said.

Brennan promised that Mater Dei personnel will cooperate with the group performing the assessment. Any personnel changes that could result from the assessment’s findings would be for the Diocese to decide, he said.

In the meantime, Mater Dei football coach Bruce Rollinson maintains his role as football coach and has the title of Special Assistant to the President.

Head coach Bruce Rollinson of Mater Dei Monarchs is hoisted on the shoulders of his players after defeating the Serra Padres 44-7 during a 2021 CIF State Football Championship Bowl Game at Saddleback College in Mission Viejo on Saturday, December 11, 2021. (Photo by Keith Birmingham, Pasadena Star-News/ SCNG)

Rollinson continued to coach Mater Dei after the lawsuit was filed in November, and the Monarchs won the CIF-SS Division 1 championship game and the CIF State championship game.

Would Rollinson have been allowed to coach if Brennan was president at that time?

“It’s hard for me to speculate,” Brennan said. “I really wasn’t here when all that was going on.”

Brennan, who is 6-foot-7, played basketball at Katella High in Anaheim and at Chapman University. He was president of the Trinity League that includes the sports teams at Mater Dei, Servite and other private schools. Brennan was the chairman of the Orange County releaguing process that creates leagues every two years in county high school sports, and he was involved in a CIF Southern Section committee that was formed to help CIF-SS public and private schools better coexist.

Related Articles

He acknowledges that his athletics background is a reason the Diocese sought him to become president at Mater Dei, a very athletically-inclined school. And, Brennan emphasizes, he did not reach out to the Diocese, that the Diocese pursued him.

He met with Bishop of Orange Kevin Vann and Diocese schools superintendent Dr. Erin Barisano, discussed their offer with his family, and decided to accept it.

“How it all came about, I don’t know,” Brennan said. “I am sure they had their own conversations. I was not like out there interviewing and seeking this. This came to me and I was really honored that it came to me.”