Jackson with the rebound

Hunter Mckenzie, Reporter

Jake-Jackson
Lexie Priest-Lyons photo

After a less-than-stellar season for the boys basketball team in 2012-13, the new head coach, Jake Jackson, turned the team around quickly. From last season to this season, the team went from a dismal record of 4-16, to 15-5, seemingly overnight. Such a quick turn around naturally brings up questions about the coach and how he got here.

Jackson graduated from Lake Oswego High School in 2005. Jackson was a three year letterman in basketball and helped take his team, along with teammate and now NBA all star, Kevin Love, to the OSAA 4A state championship in which he and his team placed second.

Instead of playing basketball in college, Jackson went to the University of Arizona and became an assistant coach under Hall of Fame Head Coach, Lute Olson, where he proceeded to coach for five years. In that five year period, the farthest they went was the Sweet 16. While coaching, he studied business.

After his college graduation, he moved up to Washington and married his college sweetheart, Stacey Jackson. Mrs. Jackson is now a fifth grade teacher in the Sumner school district.

The off-season is your season, it is all about what you want to do with it.

— Jake Jackson

Even though coaching basketball takes a lot of time, Jackson still manages to keep up with his full time job as the Chief Executive Officer for Sterling Athletics, a national sports equipment company.

Jackson’s coaching techniques are similar to that of many other coaches, he just knows how to apply the techniques so that they have a more profound and lasting impact on the team and the way they perform.

“I just made sure that we had the right group of guys in the game,” Jackson said.

Over the summer, Jackson set up a month for his team where they played multiple games to prepare for the season.

“It all started in the summer. The off-season is your season, it is all about what you want to do with it,” Jackson said.

In the beginning of the season, the team played a series of non-conference games. In these games their record was 8-2.

“We had a really difficult non-conference schedule which prepared us for our conference games,” Jackson said.

After their non-conference games, the team was more than ready for the regular season. Their season was a great success and their league record showed it at 7-3. At the end of the season however, three of their starting players, sophomore Austin Kingman, junior Marque Kriebel and junior Garret Smith were injured right before the playoffs. This was one of the contributing factors that lead to their 0-3 postseason performance.

For the upcoming seasons, Jackson expects an even better performance than this year.

“The plan is the same, ‘Do what we do’. We have everything we need to dominate,” Jackson said. “The players know what they want to accomplish. They want to make it to state.”