Two months after leading their football teams to Central Coast Section championships, St. Ignatius’ Lenny Vandermade and Leland’s Kelly King Jr. are moving on.

Vandermade, last season’s Bay Area News Group coach of the year, will be returning home to Southern California, where he will join Santa Margarita High School as its associate head coach.

He will reunite with new Santa Margarita coach Carson Palmer, a former All-Pro NFL quarterback who was Vandermade’s teammate at USC.

“As coach Vandermade embarks on his next chapter, I want to extend our community’s deepest gratitude and warmest wishes to him and his family,” SI principal Michelle Nevin Levine wrote in a statement to the school community. “I am confident that the positive impact he has made on our community will endure for years to come.”

At SI last fall, Vandermade guided the Wildcats to the CCS Open Division championship. He coached the program for two years.

King coached at Leland for six years.

The CCS Division V title his team won last season was the program’s first section crown since it won the D-II title in 1999.

King said traveling from his home in Milpitas to Almaden Valley every day and his young family were key factors in his decision to step down.

“Two of my kids are three and one, and my oldest daughter, 10, is playing travel softball now,” King said. “I really enjoy coaching. I’ve done it for a long time. Still want to do it. Probably gonna look for something a little closer.”

King noted he may return to Milpitas as an assistant, where he coached under his father Kelly King Sr. and won three CCS championships together.

“He knows that I stepped down, but we haven’t really talked about that,” King said.