Newcomers Fill Timberlake High Coaching Slots

When the second high school opens in the Lakeland School District next fall, all current head coaches at the Rathdrum high school will return to their jobs.

That means the head coaches at the new school, Timberlake High in Spirit Lake, will be just like the school - new.

When coaches and teachers at Lakeland were asked where they wanted to work in the fall, most requested Lakeland. And those requests were honored.

As a result, the majority of head coaching positions at Timberlake remain unfilled. But Lakeland assistant principal Van Tuinstra, who will become Timberlake’s principal, announced three head coaching appointments Tuesday.

Former Moscow High football and wrestling standout Kelly Amos will be the head football and the head wrestling coach, Tuinstra said.

Paul Kautzman, who has coached the past three years at Lakeland Junior High, has been hired to coach boys basketball.

Amos was hired to teach at Lakeland Junior High this year after spending four years at Clearwater Valley High, an A-3 school in central Idaho.

At Clearwater Valley, he was head football coach for one year, head track coach for two and head wrestling coach for four years. He also spent one year as head wrestling coach at Moscow.

His brother, Shawn, is the head football coach at Coeur d’Alene High School.

Tuinstra said he has candidates for most of the other head coaching positions.

“I’m not overly concerned about filling the other positions, except girls basketball,” he said.

Several in-district teachers have expressed interest in a number of the positions. But Tuinstra said five teaching positions remain open and he plans to look at all the applications before filling the remaining coaching jobs.

“We hope to have most of them filled by mid-April,” Tuinstra said.

The next task after filling the head coaching positions is hiring assistants at all levels.

“We’re going to have plenty of assistant jobs to fill,” Tuinstra said.

Construction at the new school is on schedule, Tuinstra said.

“It should be done well before school starts,” he said.

The lone coaching changes at Lakeland will involve golf and boys and girls soccer. Brad Murray, Lakeland’s athletic director and golf coach, will become a full-time vice principal and won’t coach next year.

Mario Maddy, who’s served as both boys and girls soccer coach, will only coach one of the teams because boys and girls will both play in the same season, beginning this fall.

Although Lakeland will be larger than Timberlake, both schools will compete in the A-2 Intermountain League.

Chuck Kinsey, assistant superintendent, said it’s likely the schools will field joint soccer teams initially because of a lack of numbers.

Lakeside drops two sports

Lakeside High, the consolidated A-4 school serving Plummer and Worley, has dropped baseball and softball because of lack of interest.

The decision comes one year after school officials trimmed track and golf from the list of spring sports because of budget concerns.

, DataTimes