Varsity Kansas - The Blog

by joanna

Corey Lyon is moving on. The coach of the Independent football and softball teams has taken the head coaching job at Paris (Texas) Junior College.

The Independent softball team finished 25-1 and second in Class 3A, while the football team was 5-4 after going 0-9 his first year and 3-6 his second.

Here’s what he had to say:

He interviewed at Paris and was offered the job on Thursday. He also was in the running to be hired as an assistant at South Alabama as the hitting coach. He flew there on the Monday after state. Before the decision was made on that position, he was offered the Paris job. He leaves July 1.

“It was an extremely tough decision. This is something that’s been a goal of mine since I started coaching, to coach at the college level. That’s been a goal and something that I’ve really had in the back of my mind all along. As it kind of started to happen and became a reality, the decision became a lot tougher. Leaving the kids at Independent, both the football and the softball players, many of them are like my kids.
So it was very tough, very tough. But in the end, it just became, it was the right thing to do.
“… It’s the chance to prove that I can win at another level.
I feel that I’ve had success at the high school level, had success in the summer. If I can prove that I can win at the junior college level, it’s one more step in the ladder. Hopefully one more chance to move up from there, to look at the four-year and hopefully at the Division I level.”

(Regarding leaving so close to the start of football season) “The timing is not great, especially with those boys. And if there’s one thing that I wish I could change, it would be the timing of the whole thing. With softball ending so late, there’s really no other way around it.”

This entry was posted on Wednesday, June 11th, 2008 at 2:32 p.m. and is filed under Softball. You can follow any responses to this entry through the RSS 2.0 feed. Both comments and pings are currently closed.