Manitou Springs High School didn’t have to look very far to find its next boys basketball coach. In fact, athletic director Cameron Jones just opted for a different branch of the same tree.
Nick Nunley has been named the new coach of the Mustangs after serving as the c-team coach last season. Nunley previously worked as the athletic trainer at Manitou from 2014-21 and, even then, embraced the basketball culture created by Ken and Brian Vecchio, the two previous coaches of the Mustangs.
In fact, when Brian Vecchio stepped down to take the athletic director job at Sierra, he encouraged Nunley to go for the head coach position.
“Being from the Vecchio tree in terms of coaching, having (Brian’s) vote of confidence gave me all the confidence in the world to go after the job,” Nunley said.
Manitou received about 10 applicants for the position and interview three candidates. Jones’ familiarity with Nunley and the connection he already had with the program made him the standout among those three.
“It was the right fit for us,” Jones said. “Nick is very relationship-driven with our kids and we’re at this turning point right now.
“We’ve had the Vecchios for over 35 years and we wanted to keep our kids in the program and develop the program, and we liked Nick’s plan for doing all of that.”
It was the right fit for us. – Cameron Jones
In addition to serving on the basketball staff, Nunley is an assistant for both the football and baseball teams. A native of the Chicago area, he played football at Loras College in Dubuque, Iowa. This is his first head coaching job at the high school level and a challenge he is actively looking forward to.
“I’ll bring in a lot of things I’ve learned from the Vecchios,” Nunley said. “They’ve instilled a lot of tradition here over generations. I want to continue that tradition with my own program and bring in my own kind of flavor with it.”
