THE FRONT ROW with MARK NELKE: ‘He was so much more than a coach; he was a mentor’ — Longtime Lake City High football coach Van Troxel to be honored Friday night

Byron Hout was teary-eyed as he walked off the field at Bronco Stadium in November 2007. 

Not only because it was the last high school football game for the Lake City star. 

But also, he said at the time, because it was the last time he would ever play for Van Troxel. 

Those feelings still resonate, more than 16 years later. 

“He was so much more than a coach; he was a mentor, and a guy that gave me a lot of good life lessons, and helped keep me on the right track,” said Hout, now beginning his second season as head football coach at his alma mater. “A guy I respected a ton. A good mentor for me, and I needed that in my life at the time. Still. Coming back to the school, it’s another mentoring process all over again.” 

Van Troxel, who built the Lake City football program literally from scratch when the school opened in 1994, and coached the Timberwolves for 22 seasons, will get his due honor on Friday night. 

The football field at Lake City will be named Van Troxel Field, with the official dedication of the field at halftime of the 7 p.m. game vs. visiting Lakeland. Troxel is expected to lead the Timberwolves onto the field prior to the game.

Troxel was 142-85-1 at Lake City. He coached the Timberwolves to a pair of state titles, including the 2006 squad (when Hout was a junior) that finished 12-0 — the lone perfect season in program history. Troxel guided Lake City to the state playoffs 17 years, including a run of 16 straight playoff appearances from 1997-2012. 

“We had a big fundraiser golf tournament (recently),” Hout said. “And you’re talking to a crowd of maybe 100 people, and as soon as Van grabs the mike, it goes dead silent. And that’s the impact he has on people, and it is still felt to this day. And I’m glad we have the opportunity to honor him, and show what he meant to this community.” 

CITY RIVALS are usually just that — rivals.  

Van Troxel coached against Shawn Amos at Coeur d’Alene High 28 times after Amos took over the Vikings’ program in 1997. 

Both had stretches when their teams were on top. But that never affected their coaching relationship.

Amos said he was excited when he heard that Troxel was going to be honored on Friday. 

“What an honor,” said Amos, now in his 28th season coaching at Coeur d’Alene. “He and I, for being such tight competition, remained real respectful friends. When I first got here, I stole as much as I could from him, watching how he was running his program ... he was where we wanted to get to. I learned a lot by watching how he ran his program.  

“It (having the field named after him) is a very cool thing for him and his family.” 

When Amos took over at Coeur d’Alene, Troxel was beginning his fourth season at Lake City, and that first year started that long run of playoff appearances. 

Meanwhile, Coeur d’Alene was rebuilding. 

“Not a little bit better — a LOT better,” Amos said of Lake City at the time, compared to the Vikings. “When we got here they were a lot better than we were.” 

Lake City won the first 11 meetings between Troxel and Amos. Coeur d’Alene won the next two, then the Timberwolves won seven straight. The Vikings then won six in a row, before Lake City won in 2014 and Coeur d’Alene won in their final meeting in 2015. 

“When the tide turned a little bit (in Coeur d’Alene’s favor), he was always very respectful and gave us our due," Amos said. “He would say, ‘Hey, you guys are doing a great job.'

“When he was winning, he was still good. And when he wasn’t, he was still Van Troxel.”

POST FALLS football coach Blaine Bennett never coached against Van Troxel, though he’s been around the Northwest for years. They’ve crossed paths at coaches clinics over the years. 

“Everybody talked football with him, and he kinda held court (at the high school level),” Bennett recalled of those clinics. “Kinda like coach (Dennis) Erickson at the college level. When coach Erickson sat down and started talking football, everybody would gather around and listen to him. He had so much to share. And Van was the same way.” 

Bennett knows firsthand what it means to a school and community to honor a coach. 

“I know when we put up that scoreboard for Jeff Hinz (former Post Falls High football coach, who died of cancer in 2016), it just kinda reminds everybody on a Friday night, what they’ve meant to the program, what they’ve meant to the city,” Bennett said. “It just reminds everybody just how much they gave, and what great programs they ran while they were in charge.” 

VAN TROXEL had an impact on many people at Lake City — not just athletes, and not just his players. 

“He taught me the game, got me to play in a variety of positions,” said Hout, who went on to play defensive end and linebacker at Boise State. “Played on the offensive line (at Lake City), and that’s what the team needed. Wasn’t necessarily what I wanted to play, but was what the team needed, and I had fun playing it. Anything he wanted, I knew we would do because it was for the betterment of the team.” 

Troxel also impacted Hout off the field. 

“Really kind of set me straight and taught me it’s not about me,” Hout said. “He helped me realize I’ve got to do things the right way. He always said, ‘Do the little things, do the little things the right way,’ and that always resonated with me. That means I’ve got to get up in time to go to class. That means I’ve got to get good grades so I can play football, right? Just all those little things really resonated with me today. I try not to look at things too big. Even today, OK, if I can stack little things on top of each other, eventually we’ll get there.” 

When Hout moved to Coeur d’Alene from Colorado in the seventh grade, he lived with his grandparents, who took custody of him. 

“My grandparents, to this day, still love Trox, and he still loves them,” Hout said. “I don’t want to get into too much of him being the father figure in my life or anything like that — he was that for everybody. And there’s probably a thousand of those stories out there. He was what I needed at the time, and was a great mentor to not just me, but the friends that I had, and everybody in the school.” 

So naturally, when Hout was hired at Lake City a couple of years ago, one of his first moves was to reach out to Van Troxel, to get him back involved in the program.  

They speak often. 

“It goes back to that message about the team, about the community, about being together,” Hout said. “A lot of the accountability that he brought to the school is just what I was excited about, and him coming back, everybody still has a lot of respect for him. As soon as he starts talking, eyes up and mouths are shut.” 

Mark Nelke is sports editor of The Press. He can be reached at 208-664-8176, Ext. 2019, or via email at [email protected]. Follow him on X (formerly Twitter) @CdAPressSports. 

    MARK NELKE/Press Van Troxel.