Jared Hughes becomes Priest River football's newest head coach

Priest River Lamanna High School didn’t have to look far to find its next varsity head football coach.

Onetime Spartans football head coach and current track and field head coach Jared Hughes will take the reins of Priest River football this season. Hughes, who was hired as an assistant coach in 1997, was on staff for 10 years before being the head coach from 2007-2009.

“I’m excited; it’s time,” Hughes said. “My kids are getting older and a little less needy... I was kind of getting tired of the turnover rate.”

Hughes, who went 13-13 in his first head coaching stint, replaces Justin Torfin, who was hired on June 12, 2018. The Spartans went 3-6 (1-2 IML) in Torfin’s lone season at the helm.

For the first time in several years, the Spartans will have someone on the sidelines with plenty of Priest River experience. Hughes has had stints as both a head and assistant football coach, the high school’s athletic director and as the head track and field coach.

Given his involvement with the high school’s weightlifting class, which he has taught over the past few years, Hughes is an ideal candidate in terms of being involved in high schoolers’ lives and the community at large.

“I’ve been working with the kids in weightlifting class over the past couple of years, and they’re a great group of kids,” Hughes said. “The kids are awesome and I miss coaching football.”

The current senior class has had a high school football experience that has been the antithesis of stability.

Amazingly in spite of the coaching turnover, the current senior class took up nine of the 29 spots on the Spartans’ opening day roster last season — second to the 10-man senior class it replaces this fall.

The Spartans have made the 3A State Tournament twice in the past four years, but have never won a league title during that span. Priest River has finished anywhere from second to fourth in the league standings.

So in order to stop this carousel from spinning and to establish some continuity within the program, Hughes is determined to hire a staff that, is from “in the building.”

“There’s coaching to coach plays, and there’s coaching to build a program,” Hughes said. “I don’t think there’s been a lot of program-building, as far as working with the junior high or the younger kids to build up the program. They were good coaches and they coached fundamentals. They weren’t bad coaches and the teams were pretty good, but the sustainability [wasn’t there] and I think part of it is because we haven’t hired coaches in the building.”

Hughes has not only built a coaching staff from Priest River High School, but also reached out to former players and worked with them to build the community’s youth football program ­— the latter of which has 50 third through sixth graders signed up.

But Hughes’ coaching staff is young. Volunteer assistant coach Paul Anselmo has the most experience out of the bunch with six years, and he will be joined by Thomas White, Kasey Martin, and new Priest River’s new history teacher Thomas Hansen. While the latter three have a combined three years of assistant experience between them, the staff simply has to start somewhere.

After all, experience and established programs simply don’t appear overnight.

Yet the combination of Hughes’ experience, community involvement and his run-first offense might be the elixir needed in a program that has strained to field complete teams over the years.

“Football is a numbers game,” Hughes said. “So if we can build the numbers first and then do all the components, like go to camps and do the 7-on-7 stuff. I’ve got the weightlifting class going and I need to get more kids involved in that. And that’s my goal too now that I’m the football coach.”

These aforementioned components are already taking shape: Hughes has already worked 7-on-7 football and mini-camps with some of the returners so far.

“They’re picking up what I’m asking them to do pretty quick,” Hughes said. “They’re a smart group of kids. So now it’s just a matter of getting their skills where they can hopefully compete in the IML this year.”

Part two of the Jared Hughes era begins against Riverside at home on Sept. 6. Kickoff is at 7 p.m.