By Joseph Beidler ’25, staff writer 

With the start of the LVC football team currently 4-1 in the conference, at the center of it all is J.R. Drake, the team’s new head coach. 

“I always thought I was going to teach and coach high school ball and I coached here with them for a long time and fell in love with college ball,” Drake said. 

Drake started his football career at six when he first started playing the game. High school football came around and he started to love the game and learning about why you would do certain things. Drake went to LVC for a teaching degree where he had Coach Monos and Coach Buehler, who changed how he saw the game even more. It made him start to look at the game from a different perspective. 

“Having the last chess piece or having the marker last,” Drake said.

Drake started his coaching career at LVC when he got injured in his senior year and was offered a coaching job. He thought it would help to be a high school teacher and coach. After his time here, he went to coach college ball at a junior college in North Carolina where he was for three years. Then he went to Indiana and was a defensive coordinator where he was the youngest defensive coordinator in college football at the time. 

Seven years ago, Drake got a call from Coach Buehler to come back to LVC. He has now been here as the team’s defensive coordinator ever since. 

“I was shocked a little bit, but I was happy for Coach B because he worked really hard here for 19 years, and he had a lot of success here as a coordinator and a head coach,” Drake said after stepping up as head coach. “I was a little excited. I was also nervous—those types of things—but him and I and the rest of the coaching staff have been building this team to this point for a long time.” 

Stepping up to become head coach was new to Drake, especially with how organized he must be. Alongside the organization, he also has to manage everyone from coaches’ personalities to player personalities. He had done this on a smaller scale as a defensive coordinator but now is doing this on a much larger scale. 

Drake is also a father of two children, which creates a different atmosphere for him and his children where his children can “grow up on the field.” Coach Buehler did this with his children where they grew up and got to be at practices when there was a break or before school started. 

“It’s nice for my kids to see, you know, their dad working and what he does ’cause they don’t always understand why I’m not around all the time,” Drake said.