Robbie Lucas won 114 games and one state title in 14 years as Somerset's head coach. (Somerset Football Twitter Photo)
I watched Robbie Lucas as a Lincoln County High School football player. I watched him as a Lincoln County head football coach. I watched him as a Somerset football assistant coach and then Somerset head coach.
He never changed. As his long-time friend Jason Boyle of Lincoln County said, “He was a man’s man.”
He believed in doing things the right way and he believed in helping youngsters. He never wavered in either belief.
He also was a private person. He didn’t live on social media. He didn’t publicly share complaints or concerns. That just was not Robbie Lucas.
That’s why I truly had no idea how sick he had been when I learned Lucas had passed at age 51 on Sunday night. I had talked to him a few weeks ago about UK quarterback Kiaya Sheron, a former Somerset star, and high school football in general. I knew he had been sick but he said he was fine and never mentioned kidney cancer.
Lucas has been Somerset’s head coach the last 14 years and led the Briar Jumpers to the 2019 state championship, the school’s first football state title in 116 years of playing football. The Briar Jumpers were 14-1 that season.
Lucas had led Somerset to the state championship game in 2009 — his first year as head coach — but the Briar Jumpers lost that game to finish that season 14-1.
He won 114 games in his 14 years at Somerset and endured ups and down. He won seven regional titles, including five straight in one marvelous stretch.
The Somerset football Twitter account noted: “Today all of Somerset Athletics mourns the passing of head football coach Robbie Lucas. Coach Lucas has been a part of the SHS football program for more than 20 years and served as its head coach the last 14 seasons.
“The legacy coach Lucas leaves behind and the impact he has had on the lives of the 100’s of players that had the privilege to call him coach cannot be overstated. Our thoughts and prayers are with his family, friends, and Briar Jumpers everywhere.”
He was well respected by everyone who knew him.
“Prayers for a Great Friend of mine! He was one of the First people to help me when I started Coaching,” Boyle County coach Justin Haddix posted on Twitter.
Lucas started as an assistant at Somerset in 1996 working for Jeff Perkins. He took the head coaching position at Lincoln, his alma mater, in 2002. He had consecutive 2-8 seasons and resigned under pressure to return to Somerset as an assistant under Jay Cobb.
I never felt Lucas had a fair chance at Lincoln and had many conversations with him about those circumstances but he was not bitter. He worried about the program and wanted his alma mater to succeed.
Cobb resigned less than two weeks before the 2009 season opened. Somerset players rallied behind Lucas — which was no surprise — as he got the job that he never would have lobbied for himself. But when the players wanted him, no way Lucas would have said no. The team went 14-1 but it took until February for Lucas to go from interim coach to the official head coach.
Somerset went 0-10 in 2014 but the Somerset administration did not panic. Somerset improved the next three seasons and won the 2019 state title. Even then all Lucas wanted to do was talk about his players and staff. It was never about him.
He was proud of the facility improvements Somerset made, especially adding a play area for kids outside the end zone when the Jumpers got artificial turf. He wanted young kids to be able to have fun at games and grow up wanting to be Jumpers.
Lucas often told me he had no coaching regrets because he always did the best he could and always put kids first. That’s a great legacy to leave behind even if he is gone way too young.
I’m going to miss him and our conversations more than he’ll ever realize and I feel terrible that I did not have a chance to tell him goodbye. But I hope he knows how much I respected him even if he never quit calling me “Mr. Vaught.” I often told him he was old enough to know that Larry was just fine.
“No, you were Mr. Vaught when I played and when I started coaching. To me, that’s who you are,” he said.
To me, he was Robbie Lucas — a good coach and an even better person/man.
