EUGENE — In the final hour of the Class 4A state championships at Hayward Field, assistant coach Brian Lucas sat in the stands with head coach Joe Fulton and looked on with great interest as the Philomath High girls appeared to be closing in on their fourth straight track and field title.
Lucas has seen his share of state track meets — he’s been coaching at Philomath High since 1991.
“Joe invited me to come over and I’ve never found a good reason to leave I guess,” Lucas said when asked how he ended up with the Warriors all those years ago.
The PHS girls did go on to win another state title and that same evening, Lucas was among those who received recognition at the 39th annual Oregon Athletic Coaches Association awards banquet at the Autzen Stadium Club. Lucas was honored with an assistant coaching award.
“I would say that this year, I haven’t done anything particularly brilliant,” Lucas said. “I appreciate it as a recognition of a long time doing this.”
Lucas coaches Philomath High’s throwers — but he has ventured into other events such as the high jump when the need existed. But going way back, his coaching background has been primarily in the throws, which includes discus, shot put and javelin.
Prior to joining the Warriors in the early 1990s, Lucas had coached for three years at Oregon State as a graduate student in the 1970s. He also got in a couple of years of coaching at South Albany High School.
“I was invited to coach throws by Will Stephens at OSU — the throwing events were always fun for me,” he said.
Lucas himself had been a competitor in the Beavers’ track and field program.
“I went to a little high school so you get to do every sport,” he said. “Then at OSU, I started out wanting to be a steeplechaser — it seemed like a good deal. It turned out that I wasn’t a good enough distance runner to really do that but they had begun to have the decathlon as a scoring event at the Pac-8 Conference meet.”
Bernie Wagner, OSU head coach, made an offer.
“He said I could try to make the team for that,” Lucas said. “I made the team for that two years but that was about the high point of my decathlon career. I was too slow — you’ve got to be fast.”
Years later, Lucas agreed to join Philomath High’s assistant coaching staff.
“I really enjoy the friendships and obviously when you’ve been doing the same thing for 30 years, you enjoy each other’s company,” he said.
Being a part of a winning program doesn’t hurt either.
“I guess that’s why I’ve stuck around,” he said “I mean, the first year I coached, they won the state title the year before and then I believe we won my first year.”
Indeed, the Warriors won back-to-back 3A titles in girls track and field in 1990 and 1991. Lucas said he’s coached “about five or six state champions” individually.
“I’ve never coached a champion that wasn’t a champion,” he said. “You’ve got to have heart in the first place. If I was doing it to coach champions, it’d be a waste of time.”
There have been some special stories through his years of coaching, including those athletes that either surprise or just pull off incredible feats. Sage Kramer in 2022 quickly comes to mind.
Kramer had been throwing the javelin and discus since her junior year, Lucas recalled, and midway through her senior year, she told coaches that she wanted to try a new event. It turned out to be the shot put.
“I didn’t really want her to (try the shot) because, you know, it’s tricky,” Lucas said. “There’s three different ways that you hold your arm and deliver the thing and I didn’t want her to get hurt.”
Fulton, however, said they should let Kramer try and in practice, she threw 31 feet. Long story short, they let her compete in meets.
“Eighteen days after she picked up the shot, she won the state title,” Lucas said. “That’s not great coaching, that’s a great athlete.”
Now in his 70s, Lucas may not be coaching for too many more years. When posed the question, he had this to say: “I’ll probably do another year with Joe. I’ll do it as long as he’s around.”
