Rare honor. Tri-City couple both named Mid-Columbia coach of the year
AI-generated summary reviewed by our newsroom.
- Husband-wife coaches Derrek and Kylee Lete win Mid-Columbia Conference Coach of the Year.
- Derrek leads the Southridge Suns girls basketball, Kylee the Kamiakin Braves softball.
- The duo have a combined 36 years coaching and balance teaching and family.
While head coaches Derrek and Kylee Lete lead very different sports at separate schools, the husband and wife are often seen at each other's practices and games.
Derrek Lete leads the lady Southridge Suns basketball program. During winter practice, wife Kylee still shows up to help athletes run reset routines and other practice logistics.
Then, come springtime, when Kylee Lete coaches Kamiakin Braves softball, husband Derrek cheers from the stands and gets her thoughts on lineups and plays.
“Their support of one another is extremely impressive,” said Kyle Cowan, Kamiakin High School’s athletic director.
That mutual support has been a key recipe in the Lete household. It’s helped the couple balance parenthood, teaching careers and responsibilities that come with being head coaches.
It makes sense then that both were independently named Mid-Columbia Conference Coach of the Year in their respective sports this academic year, a high honor for any Tri-Cities area program head — and especially rare for a coaching couple.
“We think it’s really cool. We haven’t really talked about it,” said Derrek, looking over to Kylee.
“It is really unique, and it’s really cool to be in a league like MCC, with so many teams. For her and I to get it, I think it’s pretty special,” he said.
But for those who know Derrek and Kylee, it’s no surprise — the two are conference mainstays with a combined 36 years experience coaching, and have touched the lives of countless student-athletes in the region.
“They want them to be good at what they do. They don’t want their kids to stay the same, they want them to get better,” said Rick Wells, Southridge’s athletic director. “I just think they’re a great partnership, they’re a great team.”
Wells called the recognition of both coaches “pretty special,” especially in a competitive conference like the MCC. The Letes are possibly the first couple in modern conference history to earn Coach of the Year titles in the same year.
He characterized the couple as “competitive” and “very caring, loving people” who have “high expectations for their student athletes.”
The Letes serve as a bridge for interschool rivalries, too. Wells said it’s hard to root for a Brave, but it’s easy to root for Kylee Lete and her team — that is as long as they’re not up against Southridge.
‘A little crazy’ to be a head coach
So, what’s the secret to a solid high school preps program?
“You have to have a spouse that understands the grind of coaching for this all to work, but you also have to have talented players who buy in to what you’re doing. And I think we both had that this year,” Kylee said.
The Letes start the day off with a rush to get the kids to school, but it almost always ends with the two touching base on coaching.
The duo is always bouncing ideas off one another. Kylee said it’s nice to have a spouse who walks in the same shoes.
“It’s just nice to be in the same room with somebody that understands. You have to be a little crazy to be a head coach,” she said. “You’re eating, sleeping and breathing it all the time. He knows that grind. I know that grind. So just having someone you can talk to, who gets it and is in your corner full-heartedly, is great.”
Kylee — who celebrated her 100th win at the helm of the Braves program — says she coaches to give back to the game that gave her so many years of memories, and to see the growth in her kids.
Derrek coaches to stay competitive and build meaningful relationships with the next generation. He lives for getting the “life updates” from former athletes who celebrate births, marriages and new jobs.
Those players often come back to coach themselves.
“It’s really rewarding,” Derrek said.
Derrek is a Hermiston product — a triple threat at football, basketball and baseball — who went off to Oregon State University. He got his first head coaching gig at Echo High School at 22, and later coached at Umatilla High before coming to the Tri-Cities.
This is his ninth year coaching at Southridge.
Kylee’s roots are in the Salem, Ore., area. She attended McMinnville High School, the daughter of renowned softball coach Larry Nichols.
After coaching a year in her father’s stead, she decided to blaze her own path and move out to Hermiston. After three years, she moved on to Umatilla.
The couple met about 14 years ago through a mutual friend.
She considered retiring from coaching when the pair moved up to the Tri-Cities, but was encouraged by Derrek to keep that flame alive and was later hired on at Kamiakin.
Derrek works as a resource room teacher at Southridge. Kylee is a 6th grade math teacher at Park Middle School.
They have two children: Ander, 11, and Manny, 6.
“Both our girls (teams) love our boys, our boys love the girls. It’s kind of just a big extended family, y’know,” Derrek said.
But living as a family whose lives revolve around sports isn’t all it’s cracked up to be.
Stacked weekly schedules means there’s rarely any time for vacations or holiday travel. Derrek said he hasn’t had a true Christmas break in the 19 years since he started coaching.
“Our Thanksgiving is always at our house,” he said. “I think our family is pretty good, too, at knowing our responsibility and what we have going on.”
But they wouldn’t trade any of it — not the state runs, the long bus rides, or the time on the court and pitch — for anything.
And the Letes say they couldn’t make it a reality without their coaches, their athletes and their families, and the fans.
