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December 19, 2014 lauren

Lute Olson’s Career Path

Today, we bring you the story of Lute Olson’s career path, and how he worked his way to becoming one of the most successful basketball coaches of all time.

Lute Olson Career PathFrom the time I was a 9th grader in high school I decided I wanted to go into coaching and teaching. Everything that I was doing was focused on coaching on the high level and teaching.

I got my degree at 21. I was 17 when I went into college. At that point, my whole thing was that I played football and basketball. And when that was over, I would go to work.

In college I worked at a filling station. I had the 11-7 at night shift, which would allow me the time to do my homework. Because usually, once you got by 3am until about 6am there was nothing going on. Just cleaning grease bays and restocking the shelves and waiting on customers. I continued to do that until school was out, and then I worked for Minneapolis Bottling.

They created summer routes for sodas, and when I became 21, I was able to pick up beer. I worked there all the way through school until I graduated in four years.

Then I started that fall in a little town by the name of Mahnomen, Minnesota. It’s up by the Great Lakes. I was the head basketball and baseball coach. I was the assistant in football. And I taught six classes with four preparations. I lined the football field on game days. When we got through basketball season, I asked where the baseball field was. Well, we didn’t have a baseball field. We had to play all our games away from home and practiced on the football field.

After our first year we had a really good season. They’d been in the league for 32 years and never won the title and we won it that year. I was smart enough to get out at that point.

I moved up to Two Harbours, Minnesota, about three times the size of Mahnomen. I was a football assistant and head basketball coach. I taught in the classroom and that summer, it was the year President Kennedy put in the National Defense and Education Act. So I was able to go and work on my counseling degree that summer and teach classes during the course of the year.

I got my counseling certificate and ended up being a high school counselor, basketball coach, and assistant football coach. I ended up being there about four years.

My brother lived in Denver, and we’d been out for spring break. The weather in Minnesota had sort of gotten to us and we had three kids at that time. So we moved to Boulder, Colorado. For one year I took a break from coaching and I was a dean of boys. I was a counselor and quasi administrator. I took some additional courses at the University of Colorado. After one year, I realized I didn’t want to be just a counselor and administrator. I wanted to coach along with it.

So we moved to California and I assisted at a high school for one year with the understanding that I would move into the new high school when it opened the next year. I ended up having thirteen years total at the high school level.

And then, we had really good success there and I ended up at Long Beach City College, which is a community college. I was there for four years. When I got to Division I it was seventeen years of background. Actually, in my eighteenth year I became the head coach of Long Beach State.

And then I got the opportunity to go to Iowa. When I took over the program we were in tenth place in the league. The second year we won 19. There was only one year when we didn’t win 20 or more. I was there nine years. We were consistently a top 10 program there. So it was kind of a crazy thing when I took this job at Arizona. Because I had turned down a lot of West Coast opportunities. Again, because they knew I had been in California so I had chances to go.

We had been in Tucson for recruiting in the spring. So we had been here to watch games and we just loved the size of Tucson. Even though it had been a disaster in basketball, when they had good teams they drew well. That was all I was interested in is if we did a good job, people would come to games.

We went from a team that was seeded number 4 in the country to a team that was last out of ten teams in the Pac 10. And I had a lifetime contract there at Iowa and in Arizona, they only gave you one year by state law. So it was taking a big risk. But it worked out well. The first year we tied with Oregon State for the best record in the second round of the league. So we really had turned the thing around. We started in December to get things together. The next year we won 19 or 20. It started the string of 22 straight.

The biggest thing is that I had a passion about coaching and teaching. I just followed that passion. That’s all I ever thought about doing. Everything was focused on getting that opportunity. I never thought beyond coaching high school.

Note: This interview was conducted in 2006. Since the interview was conducted, Lute Olson has since retired as the Head Basketball Coach at the University of Arizona.