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John Wardenburg joined the BYU coaching staff as an assistant coach in May 2001 and served the past four seasons under former BYU coach Steve Cleveland. He enters his fifth year at BYU after being retained on the staff by new BYU head coach Dave Rose.
Wardenburg has 15 years of coaching experience. He came to BYU with 11 years of coaching experience at the high school and junior college levels. His primary responsibilities the past four seasons included defensive skill development, game film preparation, summer basketball camp director, recruiting and assisting Coach Rose with defensive game plan preparation.
Wardenburg, 47, compiled a 105-62 record in seven years as a head coach at Payson High School (1988-93) and Pine View High School (1999-01) while guiding his teams to five league titles and seven state tournament berths. In those seven years, his teams earned three fifth-place state tournament finishes, one third-place finish, and his 2001 Pine View team won the 3A Utah State Championship.
After Wardenburg's Payson teams claimed three league titles and posted a 76-43 overall record, he served as an assistant coach from 1993-97 at Dixie College, where he assisted current BYU Associate Head Coach Dave Rose and helped the Rebels to a 95-31 record and a national ranking as high as No. 2. Wardenburg left coaching for two years to become Dixie's Director of Athletics before returning to coaching as the head coach at Pine View.
He recorded two highly successful seasons at Pine View before joining BYU’s coaching staff. While achieving a 29-19 record and winning the league title both seasons at Pine View, Wardenburg earned 3A Coach of the Year honors in 2000 after coaching his team to a third-place state finish and was named Championship Coach of the Year in 2001 after guiding his team to the state title.
Born in Cedar Rapids, Iowa, Wardenburg was a four-sport athlete at Kiel High School in Kiel, Wis. He served a mission for the Church of Jesus Christ of Latter-day Saints to The Netherlands from 1977-79 and earned a BA in Political Science from BYU in 1986 and an MA in Health, Physical Education and Recreation from Utah State in 1992.
He is married to the former Pam Guthrie and they have four sons, Magic, Jonathan, Adam and Barrett.
