Best earns league's top coach award

Two head football coaches in their second year on the job share the honor as the Big Sky Conference’s Coach-of-the-Year.

Eastern Washington’s Aaron Best and California-Davis’ Dan Hawkins were so honored Dec. 21 following votes of their fellow coaches in the league.

Both Best and Hawkins guided their teams to an overall mark of 9-2 and 7-1 mark in the Big Sky to share the league title with Weber State. In two years at the helm, Best has compiled a 16-6 record overall and 13-3 mark in the league.

Best has guided Eastern to a No. 3 seed in the NCAA Football Championship Subdivision playoffs where the Eagles will host Nicholls State on Dec. 1 at 2 p.m. at Roos Field.

“This has everything to do with the people we are surrounded with daily, and the resources available to us,” Best said in a news release. “I can’t be happier for our 10 assistants and the people behind the scenes who are able to make the days happy and productive. You are only as good as your staff members and your supporting cast.”

Best joins four other Eastern coaches who have earned this honor in the past.

Beau Baldwin, Paul Wulff, Mike Kramer and Dick Zornes are the four coaches who came before him, and all were honored at least once. Best played for Kramer, who won in 1997, and then served as an assistant coach under Paul Wulff (2001, 2004, 2005) and Beau Baldwin (2012, 2013).

“I’m happy and thrilled for Aaron,” Baldwin said, who left EWU in 2017 to become offensive coordinator at the University of California-Berkeley. “He’s very deserving, and it’s amazing what he’s done after the change that occurred from 2016 to 2017 with the coaching staff.”

Baldwin, whose Bears became bowl-eligible last week with a win over Colorado, spoke about Best’s transition.

“He still was able to do a great job in 2017 and back that up this year,” Baldwin said. “It says a lot about his leadership and the guys 100 percent buying in.”

Wulff also won the honor in his second year at the helm, while Kramer won in his fourth. Baldwin won his first coach-of-the-year honor in his fifth season while for Zornes, who coached 15 seasons from 1979-93, won his in the program’s sixth year in the league. Both Zornes and Best are graduates of Eastern.

Paul Delaney can be reached at [email protected].