After publishing the update Sunday of Rebekah Quiroz becoming the eighth former Arizona softball player to become an active head coach with her hire at Pima Community College, I received a message on Twitter from the president of Arizona’s Southern California Alumni Group I missed another coach from another sport.
Melissa Korc alerted me of a former Arizona football player who is a head coach — Michael Klyce at Locke High School in Los Angeles.
Klyce, a safety with the Wildcats who played from 2005 to 2007 under Mike Stoops, was hired by his alma mater at Locke to lead the struggling program before last season.
Locke’s future with a football program was in doubt before the school was given an approval from the Los Angeles Board of Managers in January 2017 to remain in operation. Locke had its program suspended after failing to finish its season in 2015 and 2016. The school addressed issues involving player ineligibility and hired Klyce to rectify the program.
Locke only fielded a varsity team last season.
The team, playing in one of California’s lower classifications, had less than 30 players. Like a script out of nearby Hollywood, Klyce coached the Saints to a 10-4 record, including 4-0 in the Metro city section, last season. Klyce had previous coaching experience as an assistant at Tucson High School.
Michael Klyce coached Locke to 10-4 in his first season as head coach at Los Angeles Locke High School last year.
The following is a list of the 34 former Arizona athletes who presently are head coaches:
FORMER ARIZONA ATHLETES AS CURRENT HEAD COACHES
High school boy’s basketball (2)
[table “” not found /]Men’s college basketball (4)
[table “” not found /]Men’s professional basketball (3)
[table “” not found /]College baseball (2)
[table “” not found /]Professional baseball (2)
[table “” not found /]Women’s college basketball (2)
[table “” not found /]High school football (8)
[table “” not found /]College football (1)
[table “” not found /]College softball (4)
[table “” not found /]High school softball (4)
[table “” not found /]High school soccer (1)
[table “” not found /]College women’s tennis (1)
[table “” not found /]
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ALLSPORTSTUCSON.com publisher, writer and editor Javier Morales is a former Arizona Press Club award winner. He is a former Arizona Daily Star beat reporter for the Arizona basketball team, including when the Wildcats won the 1996-97 NCAA title. He has also written articles for CollegeAD.com, Bleacher Report, Lindy’s Sports, TucsonCitizen.com, The Arizona Republic, Sporting News and Baseball America, among many other publications. He has also authored the book “The Highest Form of Living”, which is available at Amazon.
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