Brande to resign at UCI

Charlie Brande has shared his passion for volleyball with more than 1,000 players during more than 30 years in coaching. But he will step down as women’s coach at UC Irvine in order to concentrate on just one.

Brande said Monday his unwillingness to miss daughter Kaili’s volleyball career at Newport Harbor High, where she is a freshman on the frosh-soph team, was the foremost factor that led to his informing UCI Athletic Director Mike Izzi about two weeks ago that he would resign, following the conclusion of this season.

“We were at UC Riverside where we had just won in three games and I was talking to Kaili on the phone,” Brande said of the Sept. 27 triumph. “I told her we just swept and she told me her team won a tournament, she played the best she had ever played and she wished I was there. I thought to myself ‘Ugh.’

“I’d always thought I would never retire and that I would coach forever,” said Brande, whose Anteaters are 8-10, 3-2 in the Big West Conference. “But I’ve talked with so many coaches who missed their kids’ high school careers because they were coaching other people’s kids. I didn’t want that to be me.”

Brande, in his ninth season guiding the UCI women, who played in the NCAA Tournament in 2003 and 2004, was the UCI men’s coach for seven seasons from 1996 through 2002. He coached boys and girls at Corona del Mar and Newport Harbor High schools (1975 through 1989) and was the leading force behind the Newport Beach-based Orange County (girls) and Balboa Bay (boys) volleyball club programs, from which hundreds of players have gone on to earn college scholarships. He continues to be the director of both club programs and he coached in both for more than two decades.

His career also includes stints as an assistant coach at the University of Hawaii and UCLA.

“I need to be with my daughter, and it’s not just her athletic events. I need to be with her and be part of this growth and help her as she goes through these high school years.”

Brande, who has compiled a 126-132 record with the UCI women, said he revealed his decision to the team’s seniors before Saturday’s Big West victory at UC Davis. He said he told the rest of the players afterward.

“I think they were pretty much blindsided,” Brande said of his players, who represent the part of the job he will miss the most.

“When I stopped coaching the men [at UCI], I didn’t miss the matches, but I missed being around those guys,” Brande said. “I love my team. You’ve recruited them and you bring them here and you give them scholarships and you spend lots and lots of time with them. I’m going to miss being with those girls. I’ll miss their personalities and I’ll miss getting to be a part of their lives in a time of great change for them.”

Brande said he would have preferred to announce his decision after the season was over, but did so now in order to create the best opportunity to bring in a new coach.

“I didn’t want my leaving to detract from anything we were trying to do this season,” Brande said. “But the administration, which I’ve been in close contact with, said they needed to open [the position] up.”

Brande, a Newport Beach resident who graduated from UCI in 1969 and was a member of the school’s first men’s basketball team, will continue to oversee the club programs. He said he would like to help UCI athletics in some capacity and that he may return to coaching, most likely as an assistant, when his daughter completes high school.

“People are asking me if I’m OK and I say, ‘I’m great,’ ” Brande said. “I’m so relieved. You hit a point in your life where, gosh, it’s nice to look back. I’m proud of what I’ve done, but I’m also excited about being with my daughter and I won’t have to say ‘I won’t be there tonight.’ ”

BARRY FAULKNER may be reached at (714) 966-4615 or at barry.faulkner@latimes.com.