After six years here at Chelsea, head football coach Josh Lucas, will resign to go coach near his hometown at Jenison High School in January. Lucas made himself a great reputation at CHS: he won the 2021 State Championship, won coach of the year in 2021, and made great relationships with students and staff. Now he is off to make a great reputation at Jenison High School.
“The state championship was awesome, but it’s bigger than just winning and losing,” Lucas said. “The relationships that you build with all the kids in the school and the coaches in the community, even some of our best friends like AT, Coach B, the coaches on our staff, and the great kids in school. It’s been a hard couple of weeks for me and my wife, we’ve had a lot of tears and we’re sad but excited to be going home.”
What played a big factor in his decision was that he grew up in that area. He grew up just 2 minutes away from Jenison High School. He will be around both him and his wife’s family. With his son going into first grade next year they found it a great time to make the switch.
“I went to Huntsville High School, about two minutes away from Jenison High School,” Lucas said. “So our families are there. At the end of the day, we decided that with our son going into first grade it was kind of the right time to move, and then the other part of this was that Jenison sought and came after me in this whole process. I didn’t approach them or apply for the job, I wasn’t looking to leave. I love it here, it was just one of the things that family was at the forefront of and we had a choice to go back home.”
Along the way, Lucas made many friendships including fellow coach Adam Taylor. They taught advanced fitness together creating a strong friendship between the two where Lucas will be missed throughout CHS.
“My thoughts are that it’s a huge loss for Chelsea, but I think the other thing is I’m happy for Coach Lucas because he gets to get back home and move back home to where he’s from family comes first,” Taylor said. “I think what he’s done here is awesome. So he’ll be missed for sure.”
Being able to coach under Lucas gave people an opening and gave other coaches valuable lessons. History teacher and football coach Tyler Santoro had a great experience being able to coach with Lucas.
“He was really good with building relationships with the kids because then they play hard for you and play hard for each other and that’s really all you can ask for and that’s what it should be like,” Santoro said. “I was very fortunate to coach with him. I learned a lot from him. He obviously won a lot of games and was very successful. Just getting to know him off the field and getting to know his family was the best part of it kind of outside of football.”
