Durango High School didn’t have to look far to find its next girls soccer coach, as the Demons picked former coach Robert Logan to take over the girls soccer program.
Logan had all the prerequisites and experience DHS was looking for, with stints coaching the girls and boys soccer teams at DHS from the late 1980s through the mid-2000s.
“It’s kind of cool for him to come back and finish up his career with a few more years of coaching,” DHS athletic director Adam Bright said.
Logan is also a familiar face in the hallways at DHS. He’s in his 21st year at the school and teaches AP U.S. History and is an instructional coach who works with other teachers.
The longtime coach and teacher first got involved with DHS soccer in 1989 and was the boys coach from ’89-92. He was around the girls program in the spring of 1989, the team’s inaugural season, but didn’t take charge of the team until the spring of 1990.
Logan led the DHS girls from 1990 through the ’97 season when he left to get his teaching certificate. But he wasn’t away from the program for long and rejoined the coaching staff as the junior varsity coach under head coach Tim Fitzpatrick from 1998-2001. After Fitzpatrick left the head coaching gig, Logan was named head coach from 2001-06.
After he left the head position following the 2006 season, Logan kept tabs on both the boys and girls programs while most of his time was devoted to his family and role at the high school.
Now, with his kids grown, Logan began looking into different projects and hadn’t seriously considered a return to the sideline until former head coach Dalon Parker accepted a head coaching job at Multnomah University in Oregon. Parker led the girls team to a 48-26-4 overall record and went 34-10-4 in the 5A/4A Southwestern League in six seasons at DHS.
“Now my kids are grown and the youngest is in college, so my wife and I have the opportunity to at least think about what we want to do,” Logan said. “This wasn’t something I was seriously considering until I heard that Dalon had a great opportunity in Oregon and I decided to throw my hat back in the ring and see if anyone had any interest in me.”
Unlike Parker, who coached the boys and girls programs at DHS as well as serving as an assistant on the boys basketball team and being involved in youth programs, Logan said he has no interest in adding the boys soccer head coaching position to his list of duties.
While it has been more than a decade since Logan was on the sidelines, he’s not worried about changes in how the game is played and is more excited about the depth and skill the Demons will put on the field in the spring.
“The game really hasn’t changed that much,” Logan said. “It’s still 11 kids on the field trying to put a round ball about nine inches in diameter into a goal eight feet high and 24 feet wide space. There are some basic elements of that that haven’t changed one iota, but the sophistication of the player has changed.
“Looking at the players I have right now across the board are so much more talented than the group I had 11 years ago. The group from 11 years ago, I had three or four really good players. Now, I’ll have eight or nine or 10 or even as many as 11 really talented players.”
The Demons will open their season at the Air Academy tournament March 9 in Colorado Springs.
kschneider@durangoherald.com
