Two-time defending 5A high school girls basketball state champion Goodyear Millennium now has a head coaching vacancy after Cory Rojeck announced Monday that he has stepped down from the position.

He had a 251-85 record during his 11-year tenure.

Rojeck released a statement via the team’s Twitter account about his departure.

“These last 11 years has been such an amazing journey as the Head Coach of the Millennium Lady Tiger Basketball Program. Today, I announced to the players that I have resigned my coaching and teaching position at Millennium High School,” Rojeck said. 

Rojeck, who was also an Advanced Placement U.S. Government and Politics teacher at the school, also said in the statement that his decision is strictly for family reasons, not for another job opportunity elsewhere.

The decision was made to allow him to care for his young daughter, Grace, and his father’s declining health in Cleveland, Ohio.

“If there was a time to make this move and be with family, now is the time,” Rojeck said. “I expressed to the (Millennium basketball) girls in a Zoom conference today that I’m not leaving for another job. To be honest, I don’t even have a job lined up in Ohio right now.

“When this school year ends and I get my final paycheck at Millennium, technically I will be unemployed. It’s kind of a scary thought but I will say this: I think as you get older, you understand that life and our chance to be with family is not forever.

“Our entire family, aunts, uncles, cousins, nieces, nephews, grandparents are all in Cleveland and we do look forward to the opportunity that our four kids will have, between my wife and I, that they will get to build those relationships with the family that they have never been with much.”

Rojeck took a 12-week family medical leave of absence last fall while his one-year-old daughter recovered from surgery. 

“There’s no high school or teaching job that would’ve pulled me away from where I was currently at,” Rojeck told The Republic. “The support of the (Millennium) administration, a great group of girls, lots of success. But it was tough as I said in the tweet and wrote in the note to explain it.”

Rojeck also decided with his wife in January that the 2019-20 season would be his final as the team’s head coach.

Although, he didn’t tell it to the team at that time because he didn’t want to hinder their performance en route to the Lady Tigers’ second consecutive 5A title. 

He also said that the COVID-19 crisis delayed his announcement and much of the postseason functions for Millennium.

“The coronavirus affected the timeline in how I was going to tell the girls,” he said. “I knew that I didn’t want the girls to know during the season because I did not want this to be a distraction from what we were trying to do which was win another state championship. I didn’t want the end of the season or the last game to be like, ‘Oh, this is Coach’s farewell.

“The timeline originally was that once the season was over, we were going to have the banquet and after we had the banquet, I’d talk to the girls the next day. Unfortunately the coronavirus canceled our banquet…

“The timeline now is that contracts were due at Millennium April 3, so I had to physically go in and reject my contract and at some point the girls were going to find out if I hadn’t told them sooner.”

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