KELSEYVILLE — The St. Helena Saints have a new varsity football coach for 2023. And the Kelseyville Knights have a coaching vacancy. Yep, the two things are connected.
Eight-year Knights coaching veteran Erick Larsen has accepted teaching and coaching positions at St. Helena High School where he’ll replace Ian MacMillan as the Saints’ varsity football coach after MacMillan stepped down following the 2022 campaign.
“I applied at the end of our spring break (last month),” Larsen said. “My intent at the time was to apply for a teaching position,” Larsen said. “I was ready for a change.”
Larsen has been teaching math classes all the way up through calculus as well as chemistry and physics at Kelseyville since 1997. He’s also spent the last 26 years teaching night classes at Mendocino College. His new job will afford him the opportunity to focus solely on science classes and eliminate his night teaching duties, two things he is looking forward to. The pay bump/retirement incentives are also significant, according to Larsen.
“It’s a bit of risk since I give up tenure and some security at Kelseyville, but it’s a very good move for my family. This also allows me to focus on one job.”
Larsen, 51, and wife Ingrid are the parents of two Kelseyville High School graduates, Emma, who just graduated from Morningside College in Sioux City, Iowa,, and Chase. Both were prominent athletes during their playing days with the Knights.
“I’n fact I’m on my way home now from Emma’s graduation,” Larsen told the Record-Bee on Monday as he was traveling through Utah.
While taking the teaching position at St. Helena was his primary focus for leaving Kelseyville, the vacancy in the Saints’ varsity football coaching ranks was an extra plum.
“I was hesitant about it initially,” Larsen said. “Leaving Kelseyville is tough because I had a great staff and the kids are amazing. I established trust with them over the years and now I have to re-establish that with the kids over there (in St. Helena). That’s always a challenge.”
In his eight seasons with the Knights, including the canceled 2020 campaign because of the COVID-19 pandemic, Larsen went 40-38 overall, including a 28-22 mark in league play and a 4-3 playoff record. Kelseyville made the postseason four times, including last season when the Knights fell 28-22 to eventual champion Clear Lake in the North Coast Section Division 7 semifinals. His best single season was 2018 when Kelseyville went 7-0 in the NCL I standings and 10-2 overall.
“I left the program in a better place than I found it,” Larsen said.
A former athletic director at Kelseyville, Larsen said he has absolutely no desire to return to that post at St. Helena.
“Brandon Farrell (St. Helena’s athletic director) does a great job running that program,” Larsen said. “Brandon is top shelf.”
Larsen said he will commute to his new job to start although that could change in the near future.
“I’m excited about it,” Larsen said of the challenges new teaching and coaching assignments bring.”
Kelseyville recently lost one of Larsen’s top assistant coaches, Stan Weiper, to the head coaching position at Upper Lake as the Cougars make the transition from eight-man football back to the 11-man game in 2023 when they rejoin the NCL I.
“I have confidence that the Kelseyville administration is going to find a good replacement for me,” Larsen said. “I trust the system.”
“Oh yeah we got it posted today (Tuesday),” Kelseyville athletic director Shane Boehlert said of the varsity football job. “He is going to be a hard person to replace, he’s an amazing coach. I learned a lot of what I know about coaching from him.”
Larsen inherits a St. Helena team that went 2-5 in league and 4-6 overall last year, snapping a run of three straight winning seasons, including a 10-2 campaign in 2021 when the NCL I champions lost to St. Vincent in the North Coast Section Division 7 championship game.
