Longtime Coach Lukens Remembered for Building Champions, Changing Lives
By
Tom Spencer
Special for MHSAA.com
September 27, 2024
The results speak for themselves as there were conference, Regional and MHSAA Finals championship and runner-up finishes.
But those accomplishments are not necessarily why Don Lukens will be remembered by most. It will be for the lives he touched and successes his student-athletes found after graduation.
Lukens impacted two communities separated by 200 miles during multi-decade coaching tenures for multiple high school programs.
Lukens died Sept. 15 at age 90. He was well-known across the state for his coaching as he spent 27 years teaching at Kalamazoo Loy Norrix, where he coached with Ted Duckett, and 33 years coaching at Traverse City Central with John Lober. Duckett, now 78, and Lober, 82, are still coaching today.
Tico Duckett, one of the most accomplished running backs in Michigan State University football history, is one of thousands of kids Lukens recruited into the running world. Duckett, who went on to play in the National Football League, credits Lukens for recruiting first-time track athletes from challenging life situations and turning them into college scholarship recipients.
Lukens knew how to get the best individual performances out his athletes, recalled Duckett, whose high school running career ended with a hamstring injury sustained during Regional preliminary sprints.
“I can tell story after story of kids that he plucked out of class, and they are successful today,” said the first MSU back to rush three times for more than 1,000 yards. “Between him and my dad, they would take kids that had no direction, no future, no hope and bring them in and teach them track and teach kids what you put into it is what you’re going to get out.”
Lukens had graduated from Western Michigan University where he’d participated in football and track. During his 38 years coaching track, Lukens’ teams posted a dual meet record of 220-24, won 20 conference championships, nine MHSAA Regional championships, a Lower Peninsula Class A title and finished runners-up twice.
Lukens’ cross country teams also were impressive with a record of 198-60 during his 34 years of coaching. They won 14 conference championships and 12 MHSAA Regional titles.
Tico Duckett has memories of being recruited to the sport as a child while his father served as an assistant coach at Loy Norrix.
“Coach Lukens would say, ‘I can’t wait ’til you get here,’” the former MSU star fondly recollected. “Coach Lukens loved track – he breathed and ate track.”
Loy Norrix hosts the highly-competitive Don Lukens Relays every May. Duckett attended this year’s meet as he often does. It was Lukens’ ability to recruit and coach track that made the Knights stand out across the state.
“Loy Norrix track was special,” said Duckett, proudly noting the Knights’ dual-meet dominance. “When we would go places and get off the bus, people would literally say, ‘There’s Loy Norrix,’ and they would literally talk about us, and we would show ’em on the track and we backed it up.”
Inside the halls and walls of Loy Norrix, the Duckett name is engraved on trophies and next to track & field records earned by Tico Duckett and his brother TJ, who also went on to play professional football. Ted Duckett took over the head coaching duties when Lukens retired and moved to Platte Lake in Benzie County.
Word traveled fast that Lukens had arrived in Northern Michigan, and he immediately was asked to help Benzie Central by another legendary coach, Pete Moss, who died in 2019.
Lober ran across Lukens at a meet at Benzie and recruited him to coach distance running at Traverse City Central – which at the time had just five athletes committed to participate in those races.
Central had a prior history of success in sprints and field events, but the Trojans won the 1992 Class A title as their distance runners had become competitive enough to start contributing points at the Finals.
“We started coaching together in 1989, and we had 30-plus glorious years together,” Lober said. “We ended up qualifying right off the bat for the state finals, and we went 16 years in a row.”
Lober too was known for his recruiting to the sport.
“When we talked with kids, I’d be talking in one side of the kid’s ear and Don would be talking in the other,” Lober said with a laugh. “By the time we were done, the kid didn’t have a prayer of not joining the team.”
Lukens continued at Central until 2021, stepping aside as he ended 62 years of coaching.
Cody Inglis, now a senior assistant director for the MHSAA, served as Central’s athletic director while Lukens coached. He was well aware of Lukens’s coaching at Loy Norrix as he grew up a distance runner for nearby Portage Northern.
Inglis noted most of Northern Michigan knew very little of Lukens’ resume prior to his coming north. Inglis was coaching and serving as athletic director at the time for Suttons Bay when Lukens first joined the Trojans.
“People in Traverse City didn’t understand the success he had at Loy Norrix,” Inglis said. “I remember thinking, ‘Oh my gosh, Traverse City Central was good, and they’ll be even better’ and it’s no secret that the reason their cross country program took off was because of Don Lukens.”
Lukens won the inaugural Coaching Legacy Award at the 2019 Traverse City Record-Eagle/John Lober Honor Roll Meet. Going forward, the award will be named after Lukens.
Lukens is survived by his wife Rosinda, daughters Paige Gray of Gladwin, Wendy Pohl of Kalamazoo and Donyelle Hayhoe of Lansing, and five grandchildren: Brynn Rusch, Ian Gray, Westyn Hayhoe, Travis Hayhoe and Lucas Hayhoe.
The Trojans will host a memorial tribute to Lukens the day after next year’s Bayshore Marathon in Traverse City. A graveside service was held for Lukens on Monday at the Benzonia Township Cemetery.
Tom Spencer is a longtime MHSAA-registered basketball and soccer official, and former softball and baseball official, and he also has coached in the northern Lower Peninsula area. He previously has written for the Saginaw News, Bay County Sports Page and Midland Daily News. He can be reached at [email protected] with story ideas for Manistee, Wexford, Missaukee, Roscommon, Ogemaw, Iosco, Alcona, Oscoda, Crawford, Kalkaska, Grand Traverse, Benzie, Leelanau, Antrim, Otsego, Montmorency, Alpena, Presque Isle, Cheboygan, Charlevoix and Emmet counties.
PHOTOS (Top) Longtime coach Don Lukens, far left, is pictured during the 2015 LP Cross Country Finals with past Traverse City Central runner John Steen (center) and Trojans coach John Lober, with Jane and Jack Steen standings in front. Jane and Jack Steen are current Traverse City Central runners. (Middle) The Niles Daily Star published this 1976 photo of Lukens (back row, second from right) and coach Ted Duckett (back row, center) receiving the championship trophy at the Daily Star Relays from publisher Bill Applebee. (Top photo courtesy of John Lober.)
Next Play: Action Plans Save Lives
July 2, 2015
By Rob Kaminski
MHSAA benchmarks editor
Without a doubt, questions will enter the minds of many as they attend AED or CPR training sessions, or MHSAA Coaches Advancement Program courses on health and safety:
“Will I ever need any of this?”
“Is this worth my time?”
The answer to the first question is, “Hopefully not.” The answer to the second musing lies in the stories that follow, excerpted from a small sampling of countless situations occurring in school buildings on a regular basis. These had happy endings, thanks to trained, educated individuals who knew how to react. The MHSAA’s mandate for CPR certification in 2015-16 aims to put more school sports personnel into that position.
Roughly 30 months after the tragic death of Wes Leonard, a Fennville High School basketball player who collapsed moments after his shot capped a perfect regular season in 2011, his mother Jocelyn helped to save the life of another Fennville student.
Thanks in large part to her efforts to promote greater presence of Automatic External Defibrillators (AEDs) in high schools across Michigan, and to provide training for such circumstances as the one in which she lost her son, Jocelyn was prepared for such a moment in the school where she serves as a choir teacher.
In October 2013 a Fennville High student collapsed in the middle of a math class prompting an alert being sent to Leonard, who rushed down the hall to the classroom and began CPR. She activated the AED that had been retrieved from the school’s office and used it on the boy, who was resuscitated as emergency responders arrived on the scene.
The Leonard family continues to campaign for mandatory advanced CPR training and practice in schools across the state through the Wes Leonard Heart Foundation, and more can be found by clicking here.
Chess can be a mentally exhausting game. Thinking of your opponent’s moves and the counter moves you can make, often anticipating many moves into the future, can be stressful and draining. Luckily, Andrew Wilson, a sophomore member of the Streamwood (Illinois) High School chess team, used that quick thinking to save a 7-year-old girl’s life in February.
Wilson had just finished a long four-game day at the Illinois High School Association (IHSA) state chess tournament in Peoria, Ill., and was eating dinner with a friend when they heard screams coming from the pool area at the hotel where the team was staying. Initially thinking nothing of it, Wilson and his friend continued eating before the reason for the screaming became known.
“We both agreed it was probably just a bunch of kids playing in the pool,” Wilson said. “After a while, a man came in and said that some girl had a seizure and asked if anyone in the lobby knew CPR.
“I said I did, ran in, gave CPR and revived her.”
Wilson had become certified in CPR less than a year ago as part of the Elgin Explorers Group, which is conducted by the Elgin Police Department for teenagers interested in pursuing a career in law enforcement. There, Wilson learned about being a police officer, just like his father who is on the Elgin Police Force.
“I didn’t expect to have to use [the certification] at all,” Wilson said. “I remember during training, I said, ‘I don’t understand why I’m going to need this.’”
The rest of the weekend in Peoria was uneventful, even with three more chess matches the next day, Wilson said. The Streamwood chess team didn’t win the tournament, but they brought home a hero.
Wilson was recognized at a ceremony in March, where he received a proclamation from Illinois Senator Michael Noland and an award from the police department. Both he and his chess coach, Pat Hanley, won awards from the U46 School District at the ceremony as well.
“While you may not have won the chess tournament, you’re definitely a winner in our eyes,” Board Member Traci O’Neal Ellis said while presenting the certificates of achievement.
(Below by Juli Doshan for NFHS.org)