Turning the Page: Lake Stevens track coach set to retire

When Jeff Page landed a job interview at Lake Stevens High School in 1978, he had no clue where it was.

Now, the two are synonymous.

After 47 years of coaching in the Lake Stevens Track & Field program — including 32 as the head coach — Page is retiring at the end of the season. Since ascending to the head coaching role in 1994, Page’s teams have won 33 Wesco titles. The Lake Stevens boys team won the state championship in 2022, and other individuals and relay teams won state titles in their events over the years.

Page, 69, has spent his entire adult life at Lake Stevens, including 40 years as a history teacher before retiring seven years ago. So why end his coaching career now?

“You can’t beat the calendar,” Page said. “I’m going to be 70 in the fall. … I’ve been thinking about it for a while. I keep thinking that I should, you know, step aside and turn it over to the ‘youngers.’”

Page paused for a moment, then quipped that some of the “younger” coaches aren’t that young anymore. So in that case, why not walk away sooner?

To put it simply, coaching is not something Page can walk away from. He means that quite literally.

“I kind of want to coach track as long as I can walk,” Page said.

The Family

Sports, and track specifically, have always been a part of Page’s life. His father, Boyd, was also a teacher, and he would take Page to track meets at Civic Stadium in Port Angeles when he was just 2-3 years old. That continued when Boyd began teaching at the now-closed Edmonds High School.

By the time Page became a student at Lynnwood, he joined the track team led by two eventual Hall of Fame coaches — Duane Lewis and Ernie Goshorn — where he excelled in the 800 meters and later competed for St. John’s University (Minnesota). He got hired at Lake Stevens out of college.

So Page plans to coach next season — somewhere, in some capacity — but his time leading a program is coming to an end. It may have ended sooner if not for the fact that Page’s son, Nick, joined the coaching staff 15 years ago after competing for the Vikings as a student from 2000-2003.

Nick plans to throw his hat in the ring to succeed his father in leading the program, but he also can’t fathom what it will be like to not coach alongside him every day.

“That’s a huge part of his life, you know? And mine as well,” Nick said. “He is Lake Stevens Track in a lot of ways.”

In addition to Nick, Page’s daughter, Elise, competed for the program when she was in high school, but the entire Vikings team has become an extension of his family.

Steph Harrott, a 2006 Lake Stevens graduate who now coaches pole vault at Eastmont High School in East Wenatchee, spent 10 years as an assistant with the Vikings under Page from 2010-2019, and Elise was the maid of honor at her wedding.

Alicia Nygard, a 2002 graduate who later competed at Pacific Lutheran University, spent three years as an assistant from 2011-13, and now returns occasionally to volunteer. Her niece is on the team this season.

Alumni from every decade of Page’s tenure keep coming back to help out, and every year the family grows larger. The Vikings routinely field a team of 300-plus athletes, while a lot of Class 4A programs top out at less than half that amount.

On top of all the championships won, the size of the Lake Stevens program is something Page is most proud of. He’s created a program, a culture, that kids want to contribute to and keep coming back to. He and his coaching staff put in the work necessary to keep such a large team united.

“He makes it a point to know the name of every single kid on that team,” Harrott said. “He has face-to-face conversations with each person. He needs to know all the time where everybody’s best performance marks are at.”

Page admits he has a harder time getting to know everyone, which is another reason he started thinking about retirement. Athletes used to manually check in with him for practices, allowing him to put names to faces and interact with everyone, but that process is now electronic for efficiency.

However, it has never changed his philosophy that every single kid deserves to be coached.

“He’s going to treat everybody the same way, regardless of who you are or your ability,” said David “Boogy” Brown, a 2024 graduate who now competes at Central Washington University. “He’s going to coach his best athlete just as much as he would his worst athlete.”

The Mindset

Brown, among others, lauds Page’s competitiveness. While some programs prioritize big invitationals and the postseason over dual meets, Page “tries like hell” to win any meet where they’re keeping a score.

Brown believes that mindset helped the team do well at the bigger meets, where they would already be accustomed to the pressure to perform after treating a regular meet in March with the same intensity.

Grant Buckmiller, who graduated in 2023 and competes at Washington State University, echoes the same sentiment, pointing to the Pilchuck Cup, which Page established with Arlington coach Judd Hunter to add stakes to their annual matchup.

Its inception may have been spurred by the time Arlington coaches overheard Page addressing his team after a dual meet around 17-18 years ago, Hunter estimates.

“We probably told our kids a different story, just to fire them up a little bit more,” Hunter said. “It was on the lines with, ‘They’re just a bunch of farm kids from up north. They don’t know track & field.’ He was just trying to get his team going. … I think he wanted to say it plenty loud so that we would hear it.”

Page laughed when asked about that, and said he does not remember saying it. In fact, he was almost stunned.

“Wow, I sure would not have said that in the last 15-plus years now,” he said.

That was just a snippet of the competitive fire Page coached with, at least at one point in his career, and is something Hunter said he admired. Early in his coaching career, Hunter tried to model many parts of his program after Lake Stevens, which he laments has claimed the Pilchuck Cup for “too many years.”

Page’s intensity occasionally leads to arguments with his own coaching staff, especially his son, Nick, but they often blow over as quickly as they spark. The two laugh about them in hindsight, spending most of their time bonding over their love of the sport.

The Legacy

That love is what sticks out to most people about Page’s career. His stint as President of the Track & Field Coaches Association from 2004-2007 allowed him to ensure the sport was heading in the right direction.

Hunter credits him for improving the state meet schedule to better accommodate athletes competing in multiple events, staggering the ones that athletes typically pair together. Glacier Peak coach David Weed calls him a “wise sage of the sport,” whose grasp of its history has impacted league — and state-wide decisions. Former longtime Cascade coach Craig Bekins credits Page’s integrity and commitment to helping students become better athletes and human beings.

“There’s a lot of coaches that are blessed with great talent for a year or two or three, and then suddenly they’re the best coaches in the world in many people’s eyes,” said Bekins, who coached at Cascade from 1978 to 2003. “But I look at the body of work and the body of the relationship that he and I have had, and that’s what stands out in my mind.”

It has manifested on a smaller scale as well. Brittany Kitts, Monroe’s coach and Bekins’ daughter, recalls the 2022 Pasco Invitational. Her boys 400 relay forgot to bring their baton, and knowing him through her father and as a fellow coach for years, Kitts turned to Page for help. Without hesitation, Page sent her to Nick, who loaned her a baton, and Monroe proceeded to beat Lake Stevens in the event.

“I don’t regret it, but my son is the relays coach. He’s always joking with her about that,” Page said. “I was surprised, especially because our relay ended up winning state (that year).”

There are other moments that stand out for different athletes. Brown remembers the time Page paid for his entry fee for the Washington State Combined Events Championship out of his own pocket.

For Buckmiller, he had little experience in track before joining the team as a sophomore, but recalls the unconditional support he received from Page that helped him develop into a collegiate-level athlete.

Nick points to his second year as a coach when Page complimented him for the work he did with the girls’ 400 team, which Nick refers to as one of the earliest validating moments of his career.

“He’s a constant fighter for what’s right, what’s best for the kids,” Kitts said. “Trying to showcase them where they deserve.”

For as much care and love as Page has given to the sport, it’s been sent right back to him. Nick’s friends from the team will send Page messages on Father’s Day. At Elise’s 10-year high school reunion, Page received a standing ovation. But the biggest gesture paired with his biggest achievement.

The Championship

If you need any more proof of how cruel and unjust the world can be, consider the fact that when Lake Stevens won the state championship in 2022, Page was unable to attend.

COVID kept him sidelined, forcing him to follow along with the live results from home. Despite dealing with his illness, he punctuated every event with a “Yeah!” or “Damn!” depending on the results of his athletes. It was a bittersweet moment, as the Vikings had finally reached the mountaintop after placing second three times before, but he couldn’t share the moment with his team.

Or so he thought.

Later that night, Page received a knock on the door. He opened to see the trophy on his doorstep and upwards of 60 people down his driveway and across the yard, cheering upon his appearance. Queen’s “We Are the Champions” blasted on a wireless speaker in the background.

“I just thought, ‘This is so nice of them to do this,’” Page said.

“Satisfaction and relief. We had a shot at it, and those shots at it, they don’t come every year, that’s for sure. We were able to do it. … So yeah, it was nice to finally get over the top.”

It was longtime assistant coach Cliff Chaffee’s idea to bring the trophy to him. Nick hesitated, given the fact that Page was dealing with COVID, but also with how exhausting and time-consuming the state meet is for everyone involved. He wasn’t sure if the kids would want to take the extra time out of their night to do that. The athletes didn’t give it a second thought.

“They were looking at me like I was stupid for even asking the question,” Nick said.

So, standing at a safe distance from the door, the Vikings gathered to give their coach the moment he deserved.

“We had to make sure he got in on the reaction,” Brown said.

Said Buckmiller: “It was sweet, man. It was warm. It just felt like everyone was happy. … Just being down from not being at the meet and him seeing all his athletes at the front door, and it just brought a smile to everyone’s face.”

The Future

Page and the Vikings will try to capture those feelings once more at the 2025 State Championship this weekend at Mount Tahoma High School. After that, Lake Stevens will host the Combined Events Championship, and then Page will visit Elise in Monterrey, Calif. He also plans to take Nick’s daughter, Adley, to compete at track meets in Shoreline this summer. She’s in first grade and started going to meets when she was four.

After that, who knows for sure?

“I feel like there’s going to be a void,” Harrott said. “He’s been such a figurehead in the Washington High School Track & Field community for so long that I think there’s always going to be a little bit of a void that he left behind, because he was such a presence.”

It’s the end of a significant chapter, but remember what Page said about when he’ll truly be finished coaching the sport.

“That’s kind of what I told my wife: I think I’ll be coaching track as long as I can walk, right?” Page said. “I just think I’d have a hard time driving by a track practice and kind of going, ‘whoa,’ and looking at some kid practicing hurdles and go, ‘Oh man, somebody should tell him to keep his trail leg foot in tight to his butt,’ and you know, something like that.”

If bad legs are what causes Page to stop coaching entirely, the people who know him best will believe it when they see it. Even if that became the case, he has an army of Vikings past and present ready to prop him up.

Just like he did for them for 47 years.