Owen set to debut as ML's new football coach

By PAUL DELANEY

Staff Reporter

New Medical Lake head football coach Mo Owen will unveil his team Friday night, on the road Sept. 2 against a Kellogg Wildcats team that is fresh off a season-opening 52-12 loss at St. Maries.

"I know nothing about Kellogg, and I mean nothing," Owen said. "We are going in pretty blind."

Owen replaces Wes Hobbs, who, after eight years on the job, announced his retirement earlier this year as the Cardinals' head football coach.

"It's always been a dream of mine to be a head coach," Owen said. "I wanted to come in and see if some of the ideas floating in my head would work."

In his first season as a head coach, and coming back to football after three years away from the game, Owen hopes to bring some of what he learned over many years as an assistant at Lakeside High School in Suncrest. He was on the staff of longtime head coach Brian Dunn.

"We'll see, I have no idea but we're going to find out," Owen said.

The 43-year-old Dayton, Wash. native played a season at Eastern Washington University under Dick Zornes and then moved into coaching as a student assistant.

Owen was at EWU in 1996-1997 and also worked under Paul Wulff and Jerry Greybeal. Since then, the married father of three has taught and coached 20 years at Auburn, Shadle Park and Lakeside. He and his wife Julie have three daughters, the oldest 10 and twins, 8.

Faced with the usual problem of low turnout at Medical Lake, Owen thinks that being the first in-building football coach at the school in at least a decade will pay dividends. Hobbs, while coaching at ML, was a teacher at Cheney High School.

Owen will teach English and history. The relationships that can be built with him being a teacher at the school are vital to program building, Owen said. "The numbers will increase," he predicted.

"We found out he was a fabulous teacher and that was the No. 1 thing for us," Medical Lake principal and former athletics director Chris Spring said. "Not very often do you find a high-level history teacher that is a football coach."

Owen was introduced to Medical Lake by Tim Kruger, a Cardinal player in the 1990s and who told him about the opening.

He's had a friendship with former longtime Cardinal head coach, John Giannandrea as well. "We've talked quite a bit, Gino and I," Owen said.

"I don't know a whole lot about the history of Medical Lake (football)," he added. "We're hoping to make some of our own."

Paul Delaney can be reached at pdelaney@cheneyfreepress.com.