PASCO -- Pasco has finally hired its basketball coaches, exactly two months from the day winter sports begin practice.
Aaron Barcot, an assistant under former girls coach Steve Davis the past three seasons, takes over for him, while Winton Lytle replaces Chad Herron as boys head coach.
Both Davis and Herron moved over to Chiawana this year and will coach the Riverhawks programs.
Barcot applied for the job in mid-June and interviewed in July. During the process, he ran Pasco's summer programs and, as the Bulldogs JV coach, he knows what he has coming back this winter -- including Division I prospect and All-Area MVP Danielle Walter.
"It won't be a tough transition," Barcot said. "The painful thing is splitting the girls we had coming back (with Chiawana)."
Lytle, like Barcot, has never held a head coaching position, but he also has extensive experience as an assistant -- first at Eustace High in Texas, and then last year with the Dayton girls program.
A 1979 Waitsburg graduate and the manager of fuel and transportation services for the Columbia County Farm Bureau co-op in Dayton, Lytle was planning on returning to Dayton and working with his daughter, Kalee, a freshman.
But the Pasco opening was too good for him to pass up.
"When you have a dream to be a head coach, you look for opportunities," said Lytle, whose son, Miles, starred for Dayton last winter and now attends WSU. "Dayton had just hired two head coaches who'll be there awhile, and this opportunity just arose. And Kalee has been very supportive. She wanted me to pursue this."
Unlike Barcot, Lytle did not have the chance to work with his players over the summer.
"You're right, there are some challenges," he said. "I'm having to put together a staff right now, and we don't have a gym because of the roof repairs.
"But I refuse to look at those as negatives. I look at it as an opportunity to teach life skills."
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