With the departure of baseball head coach Garrett Bock to Greenbrier and football head coach Craig Moses to Siloam Springs, Lakeside athletic director Darin Landry was looking to fill in the gaps left by two men he considered some of the best Coaches of the state appreciated .
Landry took on the role of athletic director at Lakeside last summer and faces the challenge of not only finding the best coaches possible, but the best possible educators as well. The trainers who are eventually hired will both coach and teach at Lakeside.
“You have to be a good fit for our school both athletically and academically,” Landry said. “So I’m basically looking for two positions with one. Just take our head baseball job. I’m looking for the best baseball head coach we can find and I’m also trying to find the best teacher I can find.”
Landry said interviews will be held this week and he hopes to make managerial decisions next week.
“I want to do that as soon as possible,” he said. “I hope we make a decision next week and possibly have a school board meeting next week.”
Moses has coached both the boys’ and girls’ soccer teams at Lakeside since 2020, but Landry said the goal going forward is to have a separate head coach for each team.
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Landry added that the Rams plan to hire a girls’ soccer coach first and that Lakeside has a plan for the boys’ team.
“This is our first step in taking care of our girls, then we’ll finish our plan with the boys,” Landry said. “I think we have a great plan for (the boys). We took our first step to take care of the girls team.
Landry said the search for a baseball head coach involved many phone calls. Lakeside’s athletic director also spoke to parents of baseball-playing kids about the qualities they like and dislike in coaches.
“I lean on other sporting directors that I know,” he said. “I lean on other coaches I know. I’m just trying to figure out who’s the best out there, who to contact, and only through word of mouth and conversation. In your mind you have a group of head baseball coaches who are probably the best in the state. So you lean on them and you have to start talking to them.”
While Arkansas definitely has a long history with baseball, soccer is still a growing sport across the state. However, Landry said he didn’t set himself a major challenge in finding good candidates for the football job.
“I approached the football opening like I approached baseball,” Landry said. “I leaned on some of the best football coaches in the state to point me in the right direction. We made countless calls. We’re going to find the best soccer coach we can at Lakeside. This is something we are not satisfied with. We want the best here.”
Landry said he’d been in constant communication with Bock and Moses and while there was nothing wrong with Lakeside, the possibilities for the two departing coaches just made sense.
Landry added that athletes both loved coaches and Bock and Moses pushed their athletes to play at a high level.
“Especially with these two coaches and the caliber of coaches and men that they are, it’s difficult to find two coaches that are going to take the places of these two guys,” Landry said. “I would put these two guys in any field as one of the state’s frontrunners. … These guys, I’m telling you, it’s going to be difficult to find a replacement for both of them.”
