Sources: Tacoma’s Bellarmine Prep has a new, home grown boys basketball coach

Bellarmine Prep, widely considered a sleeping giant in the Tacoma high school boys basketball scene, has found its new basketball coach — and it’ll be hard to miss him.

Bobby Moorehead, a 6-foot-7 Stadium High School grad who played his college ball at Montana and has spent the past few seasons as an assistant under Tim Kelly’s two-time Class 4A state championship squads at Curtis, is the new coach of the Lions, replacing Bernie Salazar, who retired after the 2023-24 season.

Several sources told The News Tribune that Moorehead was introduced to Bellarmine’s players on Tuesday.

Moorehead is a 2015 Stadium High graduate. He averaged a double-double in his senior season with the Tigers, averaging 26.5 points and 11 rebounds per game when he was named the 4A Narrows League MVP.

He appeared in a school-record 134 games, including 79 starts at Montana. He started all 69 games over his final two seasons and scored 764 points during his college career.

Recently, Moorehead has served as an assistant at Curtis, part of a staff that coached the Vikings to back-to-back Class 4A state titles with McDonald’s All-American and UW signee Zoom Diallo leading the charge.

Bellarmine Prep’s last state tournament appearance was in 2018 and most recent state placing was in 2012, when the program took fifth place after reaching the Class 4A tournament semifinals.