It was during his years as a student at Meridian when Shane began to think about being a coach one day. It didn’t matter the sport growing up, Shane played whatever was in season, and grew to love the competition, the camaraderie, and the respect his parents gave his coaches throughout his playing career. At Meridian High School, Shane got to play for HOF football coach Bob Ames and saw firsthand the impact Coach Ames had on the lives of his teammates as well as the players that came before him.
After high school, Shane played football at Western Washington University for Rob Smith for a couple of years before heading back to Meridian to volunteer as a football and basketball coach.
During Shane’s student teaching experience at Sehome High School, he served as an assistant coach for football, basketball, and track at Meridian. It was during this time that Shane had his biggest coaching regret; turning down an opportunity to be a volunteer coach under Pat Fitterer. The draw of $450 a month for 3 months as a Meridian C-team coach was too much to pass up.
Shane is appreciative of the opportunities that Bob Ames, and his high school basketball coach, Don McMains gave him to get into the coaching profession.
At the conclusion of his student teaching experience in January 2002, Shane was hired as a PE teacher at Meridian High School. At this time, he was a varsity assistant for football and the JV coach for boys basketball. Upon getting hired to teach PE, Shane agreed to his first varsity coaching position with the Meridian girls basketball team.
For three years, and one state appearance, Shane coached girls basketball at Meridian and still considers those girls the toughest competitors he has ever been around. When the boys coach at Meridian resigned after the 2005 season, Shane switched over to the boys program.
Shane knew early on that he needed to have people smarter than him on the bench if he were to have any form of success. Former assistants to Pat Fitterer at Sehome, Larry Larsh us and WIBCA Hall-of-Fame coach Monte Walton were instrumental in teaching Shane the ins and outs of being a head coach in those early days. When they left, Shane was able to get legendary Cashmere head coach, Bill Kelly, to be his assistant coach for two years. A couple years after Coach Kelly left the program, former Mt. Baker head coach Rob Gray joined the staff, and has taught Shane so much about kids and coaching. Shane owes everything to these veteran coaches and is also extremely proud of his former players, Bryce Froberg, Caleb Hazel, Andrei Lintz, Zach Slesk, Caleb Hazel, Joel Small, Jeff Devries, Trevor Gardisky, Blake Briones, Jackson Short, Camden Burgess, Jordan Veenstra, Landon James, and Dane Beck who have all come back to coach with him at one time or another over the last 20 years.
After some early success as a head girls and boys coach, Shane thought that the job might be easy, and then the NWC was created. As a lA head coach in the best 2A league in the state Shane needed to find a way to maintain the competitive drive that got him into coaching while balancing his desire to win with realistic expectations and a higher purpose.
The year the NWC was created, was the year that Brian Roper was hired at Lynden. He has been Shane’s coaching mentor and good friend ever since, showing him how to teach life lessons to kids through basketball all while going 21-0 against Shane’s teams. When you are a lifelong Meridian Trojan, it is ingrained in you to hate Lynden. Coach Roper has made this difficult.
