According to his LinkedIn page, Dearns held a similar position at the Hawke’s Bay Magpies from 2004 to 2016, the NEC Green Rockets in Japan for the following five years and Russia’s Lokomotiv Penza from July 2021 to March 2022.
Dearns’ tenure in Hawke’s Bay overlapped with Tab Baldwin in 2014 when he coached the Hawke’s Bay basketball team.
New Zealand strength and conditioning coach Grant Dearns could face charges over the drowning of two basketball players in the Philippines. Photo / Grant Dearns, LinkedIn
His son is Hurricanes player Warner Dearns and Grant said on a Sport Nation podcast he would be in Wellington for the Super Rugby grand final on June 20, while Filipino media reported he had left the country on June 10.
Grant Dearns has been contacted for comment.
A Filipino immigration spokesperson was reported to have said no lookout bulletin order or hold-departure order had been issued against the coach.
Ateneo de Manila University student-athletes Rene Baterbonia, 19, and 21-year-old Divine Adili, died during a team-building swimming exercise in Dipaculao at the start of June.
Adili’s body has been returned to Nigeria, while Baterbonia has been buried in his hometown of Talacogon, Agusan del Sur.
Thomas “Tab” Baldwin ONZM was the coach of the university’s basketball team and previously led the Tall Blacks from 2011 to 2006.
Local police said the players had been swimming in front of a resort and were “reportedly carried by a strong current into deeper waters”.
Baldwin’s military-style “bootcamps” and training tactics had come under fire based on interviews with former team members, while his estranged wife Efi Kalogirou claimed she warned the Filipino university “children are not safe around him”.
Kalogirou also claimed she had to “flee away from Tab” to keep her and her children “safe” and the pair had been separated since 2020.
Baldwin released a pre-recorded message about the drownings and claimed staff sent players into what they thought was shallow water, but as soon as “we realised … they were in dangerous water”, coaches and players did everything to try to take everyone safely out of the water.