Will Butch Goncharoff's championship-coaching sun rise again in Arizona?

Former football coach at Bellevue High School is back on the sidelines, this time at Scottsdale-based Saguaro High School

It’s been a decade since Butch Goncharoff led Bellevue High School to the WIAA Class 3A championship game for the last time. (Bellevue football / Courtesy)

Stone-faced football savant Butch Goncharoff is gone from Washington, likely for good.

Left behind is one of the greatest extended runs of home-built success in WIAA history — 11 state championships and nearly 200 coaching victories in his 16 seasons (2000-15) at Bellevue High School.

Goncharoff’s masterstroke went way beyond Class 3A titles, too. His Wolverines collected victories against national powerhouses — none bigger than in 2004 when they ended De La Salle’s national-record winning streak of 151 games with a 39-20 victory at Lumen Field.

Also left behind is a championship tenure blighted by off-the-field controversy — district and state-association investigations into alleged recruiting, academic fraud and financial misfeasance — that not only led to program sanctions, but cost the school two since-vacated WIAA titles.

Now a decade later, can the proverbial Phoenix rise again elsewhere?