Dan Lucier to step in as Wildcats head coach
Courtesy photo Dan Lucier will be the new football coach at Kellogg High School. Lucier has coached for 37 years and is coming to Kellogg after five seasons at Pullman High School.
The Wildcats got their guy.
Kellogg High School announced last week that Dan Lucier would be the next head coach of the KHS varsity football team.
Getting a new coach has been quite the project for school’s administration.
A little over a month ago the school thought they had a coach, they had secured a verbal commitment, and students even signed up to be in physical education classes that the candidate had committed to teaching.
The only thing was that the candidate took another job.
This prompted Kellogg School District superintendent Woody Woodford to call his friend Lucier to see if he knew of anybody who was looking for a head coaching job.
“I was calling folks frantically asking if anybody was looking to coach some football,” Woodford said. “I called coach Lucier and asked if he had any assistants that were looking to jump to head coach and he asked what educational positions we had open and I told him about the P.E. job, but then I remembered we had a counseling job open and as it turns out coach Lucier has been a high school counselor since 1991.”
Lucier is coming to Kellogg by way of Pullman High School where he has been the coach of the Greyhounds for the past five seasons. Prior to that he was the head coach at Superior High School in Superior, Mont.
Lucier will be entering his 38th year as a coach this season and is excited to be do it at Kellogg High School.
“I love football,” Lucier said during a player and parent meeting last Thursday. “I love seeing what hard work and teamwork can do in these young men’s lives. I love coaching, but I loving seeing the kids I coach become good citizens even more.”
Lucier is a competitor and expects his players to commit to improving.
“Coaching football is about the day to day process and relationships, and myself and the other coaches are going to plan out the day to day to figure out what we need to do to win,” Lucier said. “Football is a team sport and accountability and commitment are the most important things for my players. It’s a team sport, it’s not about me, it’s about us and how we can be better. For myself, I want us to make a positive contribution and add value to the school and to the community that we are representing.”
Coach Lucier will be back and forth between the Silver Valley and Pullman over the next month as he gets settled into his new position, but he can be reached at dan.lucier@kelloggschools.org