Rather than panic, Sorrentino recalled something his father, a former college football coach, had told him years earlier: When in doubt, hand the ball to your best running back and run behind your best offensive lineman.
So Sorrentino did just that. He called a simple dive play.
What could have been a very tenuous beginning to Sorrentino’s career instead went for an 80-yard touchdown. And it not only buoyed George Mason High School to a 21-12 victory over Bishop Ireton on that day in September 1990—it served as a harbinger of things to come.
After 35 seasons as a head coach, which included two state championships, a Virginia High School League Hall of Fame induction and countless accolades during tenures at Mason, Culpeper, C.D. Hylton and finally Mountain View, Sorrentino announced his retirement on Monday.
“The biggest thing is I’m not ready to give the kids 100% right now,” said Sorrentino, who retired in January from his position as a history teacher after 43 years in the classroom. “And more so in the offseason, really. We work year-round, so I’m up there at [Mountain View] every day in the spring and summer with [offseason workouts]. And then the season runs through the fall and almost into the winter. So there really is no offseason.
“I haven’t gone a fall without coaching or playing football in years,” he continued. “So I’m looking forward to getting the chance to be a fan.”
The 65-year-old Sorrentino spent the past 15 seasons at Mountain View, compiling a 108-65 record. He led the Wildcats, who had gone just 13-37 and never made the playoffs in their first five years of existence, to 14 straight playoff appearances between 2010-23. They reached four straight regional championship games from 2019-22, losing to eventual state champion Stone Bridge in 2021.
“[Mountain View] was really a sleeping giant,” Sorrentino said. “They were more talented than I thought when I took the job. The previous coach, Eric Cooke, had done a great job building the program from scratch, so it was just a matter of building it up from that.”
Ohio State freshman defensive lineman Eric Mensah, who excelled while playing under Sorrentino at Mountain View, said the coach had a profound impact on his life.
“Coach Sorrentino’s impact on me was not just as a football player, but as a man,” Mensah said via text message on Tuesday evening. “On the field, he pushed me to be disciplined, relentless and detail-oriented, sharpening my skills and football IQ. Off the field, he instilled values of accountability, leadership and resilience, emphasizing that how I carry myself as a person is just as important as how I perform in the game.
“His influence has shaped me into a stronger, more determined athlete, and a man who values integrity, hard work and perseverance,” he added.
While Sorrentino elevated the Wildcats to a perennial Commonwealth District power, it was his tenure as the head man at Culpeper that really put him on the map as one of the best coaches in the state.
After going 12-9 with two winning seasons and a postseason berth in two years at Mason (now Meridian), the Pennsylvania native left the Falls Church school to take the reins at Culpeper in 1992. Though it took him four years to get the Blue Devils to the playoffs, they took flight once they got there. Culpeper advanced to five consecutive region finals from 1997-01, winning region crowns in 1999 and 2001 and claiming the program’s only state championship in 1999.
“Part of taking the Culpeper job was that it was a step up,” said Sorrentino, who never had a losing season with the Blue Devils. “At the time, George Mason was a single-A school, and Culpeper was double-A, so it was an opportunity to prove myself in a tougher environment. Culpeper was also a one-school county that had plenty of athletes. … It was just a matter of getting everybody united, getting my staff in place and getting pointed in the right direction collectively. And once we did that, things really took off.”
During its run to the state title, the Blue Devils orchestrated one of the most memorable performances in Fredericksburg and VHSL history, defeating Hampton 20-17 in the state semifinals on the Crabbers’ home field. Hampton had won four straight state championships and 25 games in a row before that result.
“It’s fair to say that was the biggest and most noteworthy win of my career,” Sorrentino said. “We’d bumped up to triple-A [in 1996], and I thought we had the chance to be a really good program, so that turned out even better than I thought.”
Mike Jenkins, Culpeper’s quarterback at the time, talked about his relationship with Sorrentino by phone on Tuesday afternoon.
“[Sorrentino] has meant a whole lot more to me than what he probably knows,” said Jenkins, a teacher and coach at Gayle Middle School in Stafford County. “I pursued a career in teaching and coaching at least in part because of him.
“There’s a lot of things as a coach that I look for in my players that he looked for in me. It can be something as simple as that fire in their eyes before a game, or staying after practice to help move pads and equipment because you are part of a team. It didn’t matter to him that he was a head coach; he was always working, and us younger guys couldn’t even keep up with him.
“I feel blessed to have had the opportunity to learn from him, and I think pretty much everyone who was lucky enough to be coached by him feels the same way” Jenkins added. “He gave me a good path to follow in terms of having structure, being consistent and working hard at whatever you do.”
Sorrentino went 84-29 in 10 years with the Blue Devils before shocking many area fans and observers by leaving to take over at Hylton in 2002.
“That was a tough one for me,” Sorrentino recalled. “We had really built something at Culpeper. But when the Hylton job opened up, I felt like it was one of those things where if I didn’t open up that door and go through it, then I always would’ve regretted it.”
Although Culpeper was barely two years removed from a state title and had advanced to the state semifinals in Sorrentino’s final season in 2001, Hylton had long since established itself as a top-tier program at the AAA level. When Sorrentino arrived at the Woodbridge school, it was in the midst of a streak of four consecutive state playoff berths and had won back-to-back state titles in 1998 and 1999.
The Bulldogs had also only had one head coach since the school opened in 1992, and that was Bill Brown. Brown never had a losing campaign at Hylton, and he’d compiled a 94-26-1 record in his decade at the helm.
“I knew Bill Brown before I took the [Hylton] job, and I knew what a tremendous job he’d done there,” Sorrentino said. “So I knew the expectations were going to be very high right from the start, and that was something that I was willing to embrace.”
And embrace it, he did. Sorrentino guided the Bulldogs to a 13-1 mark and a state championship in his first year on the sidelines. He followed that up with three straight regional titles and state playoff berths.
Overall, Sorrentino went 70-24 over eight seasons at Hylton.
Bill Brown’s son, John, coached under Sorrentino at Hylton for two years, then against him at Colonial Forge after Sorrentino took over at Mountain View.
“Lou got everything out of his teams that they could possibly give him,” said Brown, who’s been Forge’s head coach since 2018. “His teams were always very fundamentally sound, they always played great defense and always played physical. But more importantly, Lou is a gentleman, and his teams were an extension of him. They always represented the school they played for very well.”
Sorrentino’s wife, Nancy, is from Stafford County. He met her while they were both teaching at Stafford High School in the 1980s. They had put down roots in the county when he took the Hylton job, so when the opportunity to move from Hylton to Mountain View presented itself, family was at the heart of the decision.
“My son Joe had just finished his ninth-grade year at Stafford, and I had a daughter who was an eighth-grader, so I was missing some things in regard to them because I’d been coaching up in Prince William County and making that commute on a daily basis,” he said. “So that played a big part in my decision to interview for the Mountain View job. Also, my wife is her mother’s primary caregiver, so that was a factor. You have to put your family first.”
Now, after going 274-127 and impacting the lives of countless others, Sorrentino is planning to enjoy free time with his family.
“My son’s getting married next month, so I’m really looking forward to that,” he said, beaming. “And [Nancy] and I are going to travel a little, probably up and down the East Coast. My kids bought me a fishing pole, so I’ll probably do some fishing and work on my golf game, too.
“I’m just looking forward to seeing my kids a lot more often,” he continued. “And it will be nice to watch some games from the stands come next football season.”
