A new job with new problems, but DuChesne enjoying the gig

Published 11:51 pm Monday, January 5, 2009

In his years as a history teacher and basketball coach at Stanwood High School, Nate DuChesne was able to spend most nights at home with his wife Paula and their three children.

But these days it’s different. DuChesne is in his third season as an assistant coach at the University of Montana, and that means road trips, recruiting trips and other travels that regularly take him away from the family home in Missoula.

Being gone is just part of the deal in the collegiate game. Put another way, the job description for a full-time coach should include the following: part-time husband and father.

“It’s been difficult,” said the 41-year-old DuChesne, speaking by cell phone from, yes, somewhere on the road. “That part tugs at me a little bit.”

The DuChesne family includes 13-year-old son Luke and daughter Emma (they are twins), and 8-year-old daughter Maya. When the kids were younger, DuChesne said, he was fortunate to have his high school job because it allowed him to be home more often.

But when Wayne Tinkle became Montana’s head basketball coach 21/2 years ago and wanted DuChesne on his staff, it meant both a career decision and a family decision.

For a coach, DuChesne said, “the difference between high school and college is time on the road. But my family has been great about this. My wife understands and she’s been very supportive of the decision. And if she wasn’t supportive, I’d quit in a second.”

Aside from the family issue, college coaching has been an exciting change and challenge for DuChesne, who spent 14 years at Stanwood and one season at Edmonds Community College before going to Montana, his alma mater.

As a NCAA Division I assistant, he said, “I get to focus fully on basketball and that’s been great. I watch lots of game film and I’m working individually with players a lot. It’s very high intensity, but I enjoy it.”

The most gratifying aspect, he went on, “is working with the student-athletes and helping them develop on and off the court. You really get to know the kids when you’re traveling with them and working with them on their academics. And sometimes the kids come to my house and hang out with the family.

“Just being in their lives on a day-to-day basis and helping them grow from boys into men is the best part. It’s very rewarding for me.”

DuChesne graduated in 1985 from Snohomish High School, where he was a terrific player under former Panthers coach Jim Adams. Duchesne went one year to Edmonds CC, where he played under ex-Tritons coach Keith Kingsbury and was the league MVP, and then played three years at Montana, where he and Tinkle were teammates.

“He’s really turned himself into a great Division One assistant,” Tinkle said of DuChesne. “I’ve asked him to be a little more vocal and he’s doing that. He demands instant respect because he’s played at this level and coached at just about every level.

“Having gone through battles with him as a player, we have a great bond,” Tinkle added.

Montana is 7-7 to date this season, but has played a difficult schedule, including visits to Duke and Washington, both losses. The Grizzlies are 1-1 in the Big Sky Conference heading into home games this weekend against Northern Arizona and Sacramento State.

Because this is his third season at Montana, Duchesne is increasingly settled in his role as a collegiate assistant. And because he loves coaching, he cannot help but think that someday, maybe, he will be a head coach himself.

“It’s not something I’m pursuing right now,” he said. “I still have a lot to learn as an assistant coach, and right now I’m trying to help the University of Montana win basketball games. But anybody that’s competitive and has been a head coach before, I think after a few years you want to see if you can do it.

“I want the opportunity at some point, but it’s not something I think about all the time,” he said. “The way this business works, you’ve got to be in the right place at the right time. And you have to know people. So things would have to be lined up right for it to happen. But if it does, I’d enjoy that opportunity. I’d like that challenge someday, if it’s meant to be.”

And in DuChesne’s perfect world, that job might be back in the Puget Sound area.

“My wife and family love it over in Western Washington, and we kind of feel like that’s home,” DuChesne said. “But sometimes you have to leave your roots and go get experience, and that’s what I did.”