After 25 years of coaching boys basketball, Mark Cornelius needed a change of pace.

His old employer, Mountain Brook High School, came calling with an idea.

The Gardendale High boys basketball coach is resigning after three seasons, and is returning to coach the Spartan girls. He coached the Mountain Brook boys for a decade, before taking the job at his alma mater three years ago.

Cornelius confirmed rumors of his departure on Friday, after the hiring process was completed.

“I needed something to kind of give me a jolt,” Cornelius said. “I talked to two or three friends [coaches who had switched from boys to girls], and they said they’d never go back.

“I thought long and hard about it. I’d coached girls in other sports, including volleyball and Tennis at Altamont, Mountain Brook soccer for three years and golf for seven. I really enjoyed that. Besides, Coach John Wooden said in his later years that girls’ basketball was the purest form of the game,” he added.

Cornelius will replace Kevin Tubbs, who left Mountain Brook to become the athletic director for Homewood schools.

Cornelius was a star player at Gardendale in the late 1970s, earning all-state honors. He played on the first Rocket team to make the playoffs under the old ASHAA post-season scheme.

He went on to play junior college ball at Jefferson State, where his team was a national runner-up, then played his junior and senior years at Montevallo.

“[Principal] Dr. Anna Vacca, [Asst. Principal] Neil Underwood and everyone at GHS have been very good to me,” Cornelius said. “And I won’t be totally gone — my daughter is still a dancer there. That’s a nice thing about coaching the girls’ game — I’ll be done at 7:15 and can come see her at halftime.”

During Cornelius’ three seasons at Gardendale, the Rockets made it out of area play last year, losing to top-ranked Hillcrest-Tuscaloosa in the sub-regional.

Besides boys basketball, Cornelius also was the head coach for golf and ninth-grade football. He was previously a head coach at Shelton State, and an assistant at Alabama under Wimp Sanderson.

No replacement has yet been named.